KRL  MARX 


ACH",LE  LORI  A 


UC-NRLF 


711 


KARL  MARX 
A  SKETCH 

BY 

ACHILLE  LORIA 


KARL  MARX 


BY 

ACHILLE  LORIA 


AUTHORISED  TRANSLATION  FROM  THE  ITALIAN 
WITH  A  FOREWORD 

BY 

EDEN  &  CEDAR  PAUL 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  SELTZER 

1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BY  THOMAS  SELTZER,  INC. 

All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


The  socialism  that  inspires  hopes  and  fears 
to-day  is  of  the  school  of  Marx.  No  one  is 
seriously  apprehensive  of  any  other  so-called 
socialistic  movement,  and  no  one  is  seriously 
concerned  to  criticise  or  refute  the  doctrines 
set  forth  by  any  other  school  of  "socialists" 


444054 


FOREWORD 

BY 

EDEN  AND  CEDAR  PAUL 


FOREWORD 

IT  HAS  been  said  that  the  professional  and 
professorial  exponents  of  economic  science 
confine  themselves  to  variants  of  a  single 
theme.  Usually  belonging  to  the  master  class 
by  birth  and  education,  and  at  any  rate  at- 
tached to  that  class  by  the  ties  of  economic  in- 
terest, they  are  ever  guided  by  the  conscious 
or  subconscious  aim  of  providing  a  theoretical 
justification  for  the  capitalist  system,  and  their 
lives  are  devoted  to  inculcating  the  art  of  ex- 
tracting honey  from  the  hive  without  alarm- 
ing the  bees.  Achille  Loria  is  an  exception  to  \/ 
this  generalisation.  Professor^f^Eolitical 
econom^a^Turin,  and  one  of  the  most  learned 
economists  of  trie  day,  he  is  anything  but  an 
apologist  for  the  bourgeois  economy.  With 

9 


io  FOREWORD 

the  exception  of  the  first  volume  of  Marx's 
Capital,  no  more  telling  indictment  of  capital- 
jsm^has  ever  been  penned  than  Loria's  Analy- 
sis of  Capitalist  Property  (1889) . 

This  gigantic  work  has  not  been  translated, 
but  a  number  of  Loria's  books  are  available 
to  English  readers:  The  Economic  Founda- 
tions of  Society,  1902;  Contemporary  Social 
Problems,  1911;  The  Economic  Synthesis, 
1914.  A  biographical  and  critical  study  of 
Malthus,  in  the  Italian,  was  rendered  into 
English  in  1917  and  published  in  the  United 
States  as  the  opening  chapter  of  a  symposium 
on  Population  and  Birth  Control  edited  by  the 
writers  of  this  foreword.  The  Economic 
Foundations  of  Society  has  run  through  five 
editions  in  Swan  Sonnenschein's  (now  Allen 
&  Unwin's)  "Social  Science  Series."  But  on 
the  whole  Loria's  works  are  less  widely  known 
in  England  and  America  than  on  the  conti- 
nent, far  less  widely  known  than  they  deserve 
to  be. 


FOREWORD  ii 

An  exposition  of  his  outlook  and  a  study  of 
his  relationship  to  Marx  will  not  only  be  of 
interest  in  themselves,  but  will  help  readers  to 
surmount  certain  terminological  difficulties  in 
the  Karl  Marx.  All  original  thinkers  write 
perforce  in  a  language  of  their  own  minting. 
Those  of  us  to  whom  "surplus  value,"  the 
"class  struggle,"  the  "materialist  conception," 
"economic  determinism,"  have  been  familiar 
concepts  from  childhood  upwards,  are  apt  to 
forget  that  Marx's  contemporaries  were  re- 
pelled by  what  they  regarded  as  superfluous 
jargon.  The  first  students  of  Kant,  the  first 
students  of  Darwin,  the  first  students  of  all 
great  innovators  in  philosophy,  science,  and 
the  arts,  have  had  to  master  a  new  vocabulary 
before  they  could  understand  what  these  writ- 
ers were  driving  at;  for  new  ideas  must  be 
conveyed  in  a  new  speech  or  by  the  use  of  old 
words  refashioned.  We  cannot  understand 
Loria,  we  cannot  appreciate  Loria's  criticism 
of  Marx,  we  cannot  grasp  the  nature  of  Loria's 


12  FOREWORD 

own  affiliation  to  Marx,  unless  we  realise  pre- 
cisely what  the  Italian  economist  means  by  the 
speciously  familiar  terms  "income,"  "subsist- 
ence," "unproductive  labourers,"  "recipients 
of  income,"  and  the  like.  The  familiarity  of 
the  words  makes  them  all  the  more  mislead- 
ing to  those  who  do  not  hold  the  Lorian  clue 
to  guide  them  through  the  economic  labyrinth. 
Does  this  sound  alarming?  Yet  Loria's  doc- 
trines, like  those  of  Marx,  like  those  of  Dar- 
win, like  those  of — but  we  must  not  say  "like 
those  of  Kant" — are  simplicity  itself  to  anyone 
who  is  able. to  survive  the  first  shock  of  the 
encounter,  to  surmount  the  first  agony  of  a  new 
idea. 

In  our  own  view  the  difficulty  of  economics 
in  large  part  depends  upon  the  fact  that  it  is 
either  a  system  of  apologetics  or  else  a  system 
of  attack^  There  are,  in  fact,  two  conflicting 
sciences:  the  economic  science  of  the  master 
class,  and  the  economic  science  of  the  prole- 


FOREWORD  13 

tariat.  Both  are  neressflri1vJ-endentinnsT  and 
the  conflicting  tendencies  will  remain  irrecon- 
cilable as  long  as  the  classjstpiggle  continues. 
Not  until  that  struggle  has  roeen  fought  to  a 
successful  issue,  (not  until/ the  co-operative 
commonwealth  has  come  mto  existence,  can 
there  be  a  comparatively\cVispassionate  politi- 
cal economy.^  As  dispassionate  as  conic  sec- 
tions  it  can  never  be,  for  it  is  biological,  socio- 
Iogical,fis  bylts  very  nature  tinged  with  human 


interest,  and  can  therefore  neveroe  wholly  im- 
partial^'''l5u^^Tany^ 

"perplexities  of  economics  are  by  no  means  in- 
herent; they  are,  we  contend,  no  more  than 
confusing  reflexes  of  the  class  struggle. 

Loria  seems  to  hold  a  somewhat  similar 
opinion.  In  Contemporary  Social  Problems 
(pp.  99,  100)  he  writes :  "I  am  inclined  to  con- 
sider political  economy  and  socialism  as  two 
intellectual  weapons  which,  for  a  long  time 
separate  and  mutually  antagonistic  owing  to 
the  apologetic  theories  of  the  one  and  the  sub- 


i4  FOREWORD 

versive  utopianism  of  the  other,  are  drawing 
closer  and  closer  together  as  they  become  more 
human  and  the  old  animosities  disappear. 
Perhaps  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  the 
two  forces  will  unite  under  one  standard."  To 
a  casual  reader  this  might  suggest  that  Loria 
thinks  that  theC^lass  struggle,]  that  the  conflict 
orthodox  economics  and  socialism, 
be  overcome  within  the  framework  of  the 
bourgeois  economy — that  the  capitalist  Old- 
Man-of-the-Sea  can  at  one  and  the  same  time 
remain  seated  upon  the  back  of  the  proletarian 
Sindbad  the  Sailor,  and  walk  beside  him 
amicably  arm  in  arm  as  the  two  climb  the 
mount  of  human  endeavour.  But  an  attentive 
student  of  Loria's  Karl  Marx  will  realise  that 
when  the  Italian  speaks  of  "a  day  not  far  dis- 
tant," he  means  the  morrow  of  4he  social  revo- 
lution, when  Marx'sy^Tometh^an^vvork  shall 
have  been  completed,  and  wKen,led  by  Marx 
"the  emperor  in  the  realm  of  mind,"  the 
human  race  shall  have  reached  "the  brilliant 


FOREWORD  15 

goal  which  awaits  it  in  a  future  not  perhaps 
immeasurably  remote"  (infra  p.  162). 

For  Loria,  one  of  the  greatest  living  cham- 
pions of  the  doctrine  of  economic  determin- 
ignij  sees  no  difficulty  in  reconciling  that 
doctrine  with  a  firm  belief  in  the  magistral 
efficacy,  at  the  stage  which  evolution  has  now 
reached,  of  the  deliberate  human  will.  "The 
economic  natural  force,"  writes  Eduard  Bern- 
stein (Evolutionary  Socialism,  p.  14),  "like 
the  physical,  changes  from  the  ruler  of  man- 
kind to  its  servant,  according  as  its  nature  is 
recognised."  Herein  is  embodied  the  appli- 
cation in  the  special  economic  field  of  the  pro- 
found general  truth  that  by  scientific  study 
man,  me  child  of  nature,  learns  to  control  na- 
ture, and  thereby  to  mould  his  own  being  and  +^fr* 
social  environment  in  accordance  with  the  die-  £-^-j 
tates  of  his  own  enlightened  willT^  Similarly 
Loria  is  far  from  the  rigid  economic  deter- 
minism which  would  refuse  to  admit  the 
existence  of  "ideal"  causation,  or  the  possi- 


r. 


1  6  FOREWORD 

bility  in  the  sphere  of  sociology  of  intelligently 
adapting  means  to  ends.  "Idealism"  is  a  word 
which  has  been  soiled  by  such  ignoble  use  that 
one  really  hesitates  to  employ  it;  but  we  must 
distinguish  between  idealism  and  sentimental- 
ism,  and  between  idealism  and  window  dress- 
ing. The  right  sort  of  idealism  is  realist 
idealism,  and  Loria  is  a  realist  idealist.  He 
distinguishes  clearly  between  fatalism  and 
quietism,  on  the  one  hand,  and  economic  de- 
terminism tempered  by  rationalist 


on  the  other. 

In  The  Economic  Foundations  of  Society 
(pp.  376  et  seq.)  he  writes:  "Can  we  say  that 
a  doctrine  leads  to  fatalism  which  concedes  a 
fertile  field  to  human  activity,  and  which  only 
seeks  to  mark  out  the  limits  within  which  such 
efforts  may  be  applied  ?  Can  we  give  the  name 
of  quietism  to  a  theory  whose  aims  lie  in  the 
direction  nf^ihrtitiiljngfn^ 
aware  of  its  ends,  for  blind  and  ignorant  inno- 
vation which  is  powerless  to  realise  its  pur- 


FOREWORD  17 

poses?  .  .  .  Turning  to  consider  the  great 
social  transformations  which  alter  the  struc- 
ture of  property,  our  theory  does,  it  is  true, 
deny  that  such  movements  can  be  effected  be- 
fore the  necessary  change  in  economic  condi- 
tions has  rendered  them  inevitable;  but  far 
from  this  conclusion  leading  to  the  degradation 
of  human  nature,  it 'seems  to  us  to  inspire  the 
highest  sentiments.  If  we  examine  the  great 
spontaneous  movements  that  have  sought  to 
modify  economic  conditions  before  their  time, 
we  shall  find  that  they  all  lacked  definite  pur- 
pose. There  was  no  clear  idea  of  the  new 
order  of  things  to  be  substituted  for  the  old; 
on  this  account  these  movements  were  wanting 
in  discipline;  they  were  anarchic,  and  hence 
their  lack  of  effect.  Our  theory,  on  the  con- 
trary, declares  that  it  is  first  of  all  necessary 
to  learn  the  nature  of  the  future  social  system, 
and,  after  this  knowledge  has  been  acquired, 
to  substitute  a  co-ordination  of  effort  towards 
this  rigorously  determined  end  for  the  blind 


i8  FOREWORD 

and  disorganised  attempts  that  have  thus  far 

been  made  in  this  direction.  .  .  .  jFar  from 

leading  towards  fatalism  OUT  theory  tends  to 

^encourage    rational    human    activity,    which 


alone  can  prevent,  or  at  least  mitigate,  the 
confusion  otherwise  attendant  upon  the  social 
metamorphosis.  ...  A  wide  field  is  thus 
opened  to  human  activity,  and  it  is  certainly 
a  noble  mission  for  mankind  to  withdraw  so- 
cial development  from  the  operation  of  the 
blind  and  brutal  forces  of  physical  evolution 
and  to  submit  the  process  to  the  kindlier  and 
more  civilised  action  of  human  reason." 

The  definitive  exposition  of  Loria's  views  is 
to  be  found  in  The  Economic  Synthesis;  but 
since  in  his  theory  of  social  evolution  the  ef- 
fects of  increasing  population  play  so  notable 
a  part,  reference  must  first  be  made  to  his 
examination  of  Malthus'  theory  of  population. 
At  the  outset,  however,  let  us  recall  Marx's 
attitude  to  the  Malthusian  doctrine. 


FOREWORD  19 

(Marx  rejected  the  idea  that,  for  human  be- 
ings, population  tends  to  grow  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  necessarily  to  press  on  the  means  of 
subsistence/  Though  he  accepted  Darwinism 
and  had  a  profound  admiration  for  Darwin, 
as  far  as  the  human  species  is  concerned  he 
rejected  Malthusianism  (on  which  Darwin- 
ism is  based),  and  wrote  of  Malthus  in  terms 
of  bitter  personal  hostility.  The  animus  we 
may  ignore,  but  the  arguments  are  worth  re- 
capitulating. (Pressure  of  population^Jie^say^.  \/ 
isjhe  outcome  of  capitalism^  On  p.  645  of 
Capital  Marx  writes:  "The  labouring  popu- 
lation  .  .  .  produces,  along  with  the  accu 
lariorFof  capital  produced  by  it,  the  means  by 
jwhich  it  is  itself  made^  relatively  superfluous, 
is  turned  into  a  relatively  surplus  population,  ^ 
and  it  does  this  always  to  an  increasing  extent. 
This  is  a  law  of  population  peculiar  to  the 
capitalist  mode  of  production,  and  in  fact 
every  special  historic  mode  of  production  has 
its  own  special  laws  of  population,  historically 


20  FOREWORD 

valid  within  its  limits  alone.  An  abstract  law 
of  population  exists  for  plants  and  animals 
only,  and  only  in  so  far  as  man  has  not  inter- 
fered with  them."  Later  in  the  same  chapter 
jie  says  (in  effect)  that  un^uejcrtility  is  char- 
acteristic of  poverty-stricken circumstances, 
and  that  with  improved  conditions  the  popu- 
lation  difficulty-tends  to  settle  itself." 


We  shalTsee  that  Loria  saysTriuch  the  same 
thing,  and  shall  consider  the  assertion  pres- 
ently. 

At  a  later  date  (1875)  Marx  writes  some- 
what more  guardedly.  In  his  Criticism  of  the 
Gotha  Programme  the  reference  to  the  Mal- 
thusian  doctrine  of  population  runs  as  follows : 
uBut  if  I  accept  this  law  [the  iron  law  of 
wages]  as  formulated  byLassalle,  I  must 
likewise  accept  its  foundation.  What  is  this 
foundation?  As  F.  A.  Lange  showed  shortly 
after  Lassalle's  death,  the  iron  law  of  wages 
is  founded  upon  Malthus'  theory  of  popula- 
tion, a  theory  which  Lange  himself  espoused. 


FOREWORD  21 

Now  if  the  iron  law  of  wages  be  correct,  it  is 
impossible  to  abrogate  it,  even  if  we  should  do 
away  with  wage  labour  a  hundred  times  over, 
for  not  the  wage  system  alone,  but  every  social 
system,  must  be  governed  by  the  law.  Upon 
this  foundation,  for  fifty  years  and  more/eco^ 
omists  have  continued  to  demonstrate  than 
socialism  could  never  suppress  poverty,  which  \ 
they  regard  as  resulting  from  the  nature  o 
things^JSocialism,  they  declare,  can  only  gen- 
eralise poverty,  can  only  diffuse  it  simulta- 
neously over  the  whole  surface  of  society!" 

Does  it  not  almost  seem  as  if  Marx,  by  1875, 
had,  for  a  moment  at  least,  glimpsed  the  real 
difficulty?  For  if  we  grant  for  the  sake  of 
argument  that  the  excess  of  population  under 
capitalism  be  only  a  relative  excess,df  we  grant 
that  each  historic  mode  of  production  has  its 
own  special  law  of  population,  the  question  we 
have  to  ask  ourselves  as  socialists  is,  "What 
will  be  the  law  of  population  under  social- 
ism?" May  not  socialism  tend  to  promote  an 


22  FOREWORD 

absolute  excess  of  population?  Will  not  nat- 
ural increase,  stimulated  by  easy  circum- 
stances, threaten  the  stability  of  the  system 
unless  the  growth  of  population  be  deliberately 
checked?  Will  not  the  inhabitants  of  each 
area  have  to  specify  some  limit  beyond  which 
it  is  undesirable  that  the  population  of  that 
area  should  increase?  Ways  and  means,  social 
and  individual,  lie  beyond  our  present  scope. 
But  in  our  opinion  Pauj^  Lafargue,  Henry 
many  others  who  have  written  on 


this  question,  and  who  have  endeavoured  to 
meet  the  Malthusian  difficulty  by  a  simple  de- 
nial of  the  facts  upon  which  "Parson  Malthus" 
grounded  his  theory,  have  displayed  more  zeal 
than  knowledge.  As  Karl  Pearson  wrote 
thirty  years  ago:  "Marx  by  abusing  Malthus 
has  not  solved  the  population  difficulty";  and 
we  agree  with  the  same  writer  that  "the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  law  discovered  by  Malthus  is 
an  essential  of  any  socialistic  theory  which  pre- 
tends to  be  scientific";  but  happily  it  is  no 


FOREWORD  23 

longer  true  that  "Kautsky  seems  to  stand  alone 
among  socialists  in  accepting  the  Malthusian 
law  and  its  consequences"  ( The  Ethic  of  Free- 
thought,  1888,  pp.  438-9). 

Loria's  treatment  of  the  subject  is  closely 
akin  to  that  of  Marx,  though  Loria  differs 
from  Marx  in  that  he  speaks  with  admiration, 
nay  almost  with  veneration,  of  the  author  of 
The  Principles  of  Population.  As  regards 
the  main  issue,  Loria  contends  that  while 
Malthus  elucidated  a  profoundly  important 
truth,  he  erred  in  respect  of  many  of  its  appli- 
cations. [In  present  conditions,  i.e.,  under 
capitalism,  says  Loria,  there  is  no  excess  of 
population  over  food  supply,  but  merely  (in 
certain  countries)  an  excess  of  people  in  rela- 
tion to  the  privately  owned  capital  which  is 
able  to  secure  profitable  investment  Hence, 
as  a  result  not  of  over-population  but  simply 
of  capitalist  conditions,  we  have  in  addition 
to  the  mass  of  the  workers  who  obtain  subsist- 
ence, on  the  one  hand  an  owning  class  with  a 


24  FOREWORD 

superfluity,  and  on  the  other  a  parasitic  class 
of  dependents,  paupers,  semi-criminals,  and 
criminals. 

He  contends,  further,  that  Malthus'  theory 
is  invalidated  by  the  ascertained  fact  that,  as 
far  as  human  beings  are  concerned,  |in  excess 
yof  food  over  population  does  not  necessarily 
lead  to  an  increase  in  the  birth  rate — that  a 
rising  standard  of  life  is  nowadays  apt  to  be 
characterised  by  diminished  procreation) 
Speaking  of  certain  postmalthusian  applica- 
tions of  Malthus'  theory,  he  writes  (Contem- 
porary Social  Problems,  p.  79)  :  "Some  also 
suggest  various  physiological  expedients — the 
obscene  abominations  of  the  so-called  neomal- 
thusians — to  limit  population.  Do  they  not 
see  that  there  is  no  excess  of  mouths  to  be  fed, 
and  that  procreation  will  of  itself  diminish 
with  the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the 
working  classes,  without  recourse  to  loathsome 
and  unnatural  practices?" 
In  this  passage,  as  repeatedly  in  his  Malthus, 


FOREWORD  25 

Loria  fails  oddly  (for  so  acute  a  mind)  in  his 
analysis  of  operating  causes.  As  the  result  of 
a  rising  standard  of  life — consequent  upon  im- 
proved economic  conditions  among  the  prole- 
tariat— the  workers,  we  are  told  (Malthus,  p. 
80),  "become  less  prolific."  Thus  the  growth 
of  population  is  "automatically"  regulated  by 
economic  means,  and  there  is  no  need  to  have 
recourse  to  "physiological  expedients"  to  limit 
population.  Yet  he  nowhere  endeavours  to 
elucidate  the  working  of  this  economic  factor 
in  the  biologic  field,  or  to  show  how  it  can 
possibly  operate  unless  precisely  in  virtue  of 
what  he  is  so  strangely  and  so  inconsistently 
moved  to  condemn,  viz.,  the  deliberate  appli- 
cation of  increasing  physiological  knowledge 
by  individual  couples  in  order  to  regulate  the 
number  of  their  offspring.  In  a  word,  by  birth 
control. 

As  far  as  past  stages  of  economic  evolution 
are  concerned,  the  transition  from  primitive 
tribal  communism  to  slavery,  from  slavery  to 


26  FOREWORD 

serfdom  and  the  guild  system,  and  from  these 
to  capitalism,  Loria  himself  insists  that  the 
prime  motive  force  has  been  the  pressure  of 
increasing  population  on  the  means  of  subsist- 
ence. Thus  in  Contemporary  Social  Problems 
(pp.  128  et  seq.)  he  writes:  "We  easily  under- 
stand how  evolution  takes  place  in  the  sphere 
of  economic  phenomena  provided  we  stead- 
fastly hold  in  mind  the  simple  premise  that 
ceaseless  increase  in  population  makes  neces- 
sary the  occupation  and  cultivation  of  lands 
ever  less  fertile,  hence  requiring  more  effica- 
cious means  of  production  to  combat  the  in- 
creasing resistance  of  matter.  Given,  there- 
fore, a  certain  density  of  population  and  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  fertility  of  cultivated  land,  there 
is  rendered  not  only  possible,  but  also  neces- 
sary, a  determinate  economic  system  permit- 
ting human  labour  to  attain  a  commensurate 
productivity;  but  population  increasing,  and 
the  necessity  of  cultivating  less  fertile  lands  be- 
coming urgent,  the  economic  system  hitherto 


FOREWORD  27 

existing  proves  inadequate,  since  the  degree  of 
productivity  which  it  permits  to  labour  is  in- 
sufficient to  combat  matter  now  become  more 
rebellious.  As  the  economic  and  productive 
system  which  corresponded  with  the  preceding 
degree  of  the  productivity  of  the  soil  has 
grown  incompatible  with  the  new  and  more 
exacting  conditions,  it  must  be  supplanted  by 
a  better  system.  Then  follows  an  epoch  of 
social  disintegration  which  destroys  the  super- 
annuated form,  from  whose  ashes  a  new  struc- 
ture arises;  on  the  ruins  of  the  shattered  eco- 
nomic system  is  erected  a  new  one  which  al- 
lows human  nature  to  become  more  produc- 
tive, and  is  therefore  adapted,  for  a  time,  to 
combat  the  increasing  resistance  of  matter. 
However,  with  each  additional  increment  to 
population,  a  moment  comes  when  it  is  neces- 
sary to  bring  under  cultivation  lands  which 
are  still  more  resistant,  and  for  the  develop- 
ment of  which  the  prevailing  economic  system 
is  found  to  be  inadequate;  consequently  this 


28  FOREWORD 

system  suffers  the  fate  of  those  which  have  pre- 
ceded it,  and  it  is  in  turn  destroyed  to  give 
place  to  a  new  and  superior  form." 

The  detailed  application  of  these  ideas  is 
one  of  the  main  themes  of  Loria's  Analysis  of 
Capitalist  Property.  We  learn,  he  says,  from 
history  and  statistics  that  capitalistic  property 
(the  term  is  here  used  by  Loria  in  the  widest 
sense  to  include  all  the  forms  of  property 
which  render  possible  the  rg£lmfatinp  ^f  rme 
human  being  by  another)  is  everywhere  and 
at  all  times  due  to  one  and  the  same  cause,  the 
suppression  of  free  land.  (As  long  as  there  is 
any  free  land,  as  long  as  any  man  who  so  de- 
sires can  take  possession  of  a  piece  of  land  and 
develop  it  by  his  labour,  capitalistic  property 
is  impossible,  because  no  man  will  willingly 
work  for  another  when  he  can  establish  him- 
self for  his  own  account  on  a  piece  of  land 
without  paying  for  it.  Where  there  is  free 
land,  labour  owns  the  means  of  production,  so 


FOREWORD  29 

that  agriculture  is  carried  on  by  free  peasants 
on  small  holdings,  whilst  manufacturing  in- 
dustry (in  so  far  as  this  exists  at  such  a  stage) 
is  in  the  hands  of  independent  artisans^  In 
these  conditions  labour  is  isolated,  and  isolated 
labour  rarely  produces  anything  more  than  the 
labourer's  subsistence.  The  regular  supple- 
mentary production  of  "income"  is  the  charac- 
teristic feature  of  associated  labour. 

This  brings  us  to  The  Economic  Synthesis, 
a  work  which  bears  as  sub-title  "A  Study  of 
the  Laws  of  Income."  It  is,  Loria  tells  us, 
"the  complement  and  the  theoretic  crown"  of 
all  his  earlier  writings.  The  meaning  he  at- 
taches to  the  word  income  is,  in  truth,  simple 
enough;  but  that  meaning  is  the  very  core  of 
Lorianism,  just  as  surplus  value  is  (for  many) 
the  very  core  of  Marxism.  Isolated  labour, 
labour  of  the  kind  described  in  the  last  para- 
graph, produces,  says  Loria,  first  of  all  sub- 
sistence— the  bare  necessities  of  life.  In  ex- 
ceptionally favourable  conditions  even  isolated 


30  FOREWORD 

labour  may  produce  something  more  than  this, 
and  that  something  more  is  income.  But  as  a 
rule,  and  more  and  more  as  population  in- 
creases and  land  of  diminishing  fertility  has 
to  be  brought  under  cultivation,  isolated  labour 
fails  to  produce  anything  beyond  subsistence, 
fails  to  produce  even  that,  so  that  it  becomes 
necessary  to  have  recourse  to  the  superior  pro- 
ductivity of  associated  labour.  Now  for  this, 
since  the  natural  man  is  averse  from  associated 
labour,  some  form  of  coercion,  direct  or  indi- 
rect, is  essential;  and  the  history  of  all  the  de- 
veloped economic  systems  that  have  hitherto 
prevailed  is  the  history,  in  one  form  or 
another,  of  the  coercion  to  associated  labour. 
Income,  in  the  Lorian  sense  of  the  term,  is 
"the  specific  product  of  associated  labour"; 
i.e.,  it  is  the  surplus  produced  by  labour  be- 
cause it  is  associated,  over  and  above  what  the 
labourers  could  have  produced  in  isolation. 
Working  in  isolation  they  produce,  or  theoret- 
ically might  have  produced,  subsistence  for 


FOREWORD  31 

themselves;  associated  they  produce  something 
more,  which  is  income,  and  this  accrues  to 
those  who  control  and  direct  the  associating 
force. 

In  primitive  tribal  communism  that  force 
emanates  from  the  collectivity  of  economic 
equals,  and  the  "undifferentiated  income"  is 
communally  owned  and  consumed.  But  sub- 
sequently "differentiated  income,"  received  by 
non-labourers,  makes  its  appearance.  In 
slave-owning  communities,  differentiated  in- 
come goes  to  the  slave  owners;  in  feudal  serf- 
dom, it  accrues  to  the  baronage;  under  modern 
capitalist  conditions  the  dispossessed  prole- 
tarian masses  produce  of  course  their  own  sub- 
sistence, and  produce  in  addition  income  for 
the  legal  owners  of  land  and  capital.  Slave 
owners,  barons,  capitalists,  jirein  successive 
~sTages"~tfie  i4recipients_gf_£(difl^rentijte  in- 


"come. 


Throughout  the  history  of  these  economic 
phases  there  has  been  a  conflict  between  the  in- 


32  FOREWORD 

terests  of  the  labourers  and  those  of  the  re- 
cipients of  income,  taking  the  form,  in  times 
iof  exceptional  stress,  of  slave  insurrections  and 
slave  wars,  of/Jacqueries)  and  ruthless  reprisals 
By  the  baronage,  oTstrikes  and  lock-outs. 
Ijlere  we  have  one  aspect  of  what  Loria  terms 
"|fhe  struggle  between  subsistence  and  in- 
c^me,"  and  this  aspect  coincides  obviously 
enough  with  one  aspect  of  the  Marxist  class 
struggle. 

(The  association  of  labour  is  the  prime  cause 
(X  of  labours  enhanced  productivity.  But  while 
the  association  increases  productivity,  the  co- 
ercion that  is  requisite  to  secure  association 
exercises  a  restrictive  influence  upon  produc- 
tivity, the  restriction  being  more  marked  in 
proportion  to  the  severity  of  the  coercion. 
Thus  the  crude  and  harsh  coercion  of  the 
slave-owning  system  makes  slave  labour  (in 
(  part  for  psychological  reasons  dependent  upon 
the  mentality  of  the  labourer)  less  productive 
than  serf  labour  under  the  feudal  system, 


FOREWORD  33 

wherein  coercion  was  somewhat  milder.  In 
modern  capitalism  coercion,  though  still  very 
real,  is  veiled,  and  for  this  reason  (quite  apart 
from  the  peculiar  advantages  of  machinofac- 
ture)  associated  labour  is  more  productive 
under  capitalism/ 

It  is  the  superior  productivity  of  each  suc- 
cessive system  which  has  rendered  it  victorious 
over  its  predecessor.  With  the  dry  light  of 
economic  science  Loria  displays  for  us  the 
working  of  the  type  of  production  dominant 
to-day,  the  most  effective  system  of  production  y 
the  world  has  yet  known. 

Such  is  Loria's  outline  picture  of  the  suc- 
cession of  economic  phases. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  trace  the  Italian 
economist's  detailed  analysis  of  the  causes 
which  lead  to  the  break  up  of  one  economic 
system  and  its  replacement  by  another.  Suffice 
it  to  say  that  in  his  view  an  important  part  is 
played  by  the  action  of  those  whom  he  calls 
"unproductive  labourers,"  members  of  the 


34  FOREWORD 

educated  caste  living  also  on  differentiated 
income,  on  portions  of  income  reallotted  by  the 
primary  recipients  of  income,  whose  interests, 
in  the  prosperous  phase  of  any  system  of  in- 
come, the  educated  caste  is  thus  paid  to  serve. 
A  typical  service  is  that  of  the  priestly  order, 
\yhich  is  maintained  "to  pervert  the  egoism" 
of  the  labourersT  to  delude  them  into  the  belief 
that  they  are  pursuing  their  own  better  inter- 


ests bvjjeacefullv  and  diligently  producing 


income  for  the  master  class. 


But  in  the  declining  phase  of  any  economic 
system  (and  Loria  considers  that  the  wage  sys- 
tem of  capitalism  has  now,  despite  its  imposing 
appearance,  actually  entered  its  declining 
phase),  the  diminution  of  income  curtails  the 
amount  available  for  reallotment  to  the  un- 
productive labourers.  Hence  from  support- 
ers of  the  existing  system  they  are  speedily 
transformed  into  its  active  opponents.  These 
"intellectuals"  now  make  common  cause  with 
the  labourers,  the  disinherited  of  the  earth; 


FOREWORD  35 

and  the  old  property  system  totters  to  its  fall. 
He  writes  (The  Economic  Foundations  of 
Society,  p.  347)  :  "All  revolutions  undertaken 
by  the  non-proprietary  classes  alone,  without 
the  support  of  the  unproductive  labourers,  are 
.  .  .  foredoomed  to  failure.  The  rebels,  di- 
vided and  disorganised,  not  at  all  sure  of  them- 
selves and  uncertain  of  the  ends  they  would 
attain,  soon  fall  back  under  the  dominion  of 
the  proprietary  class.  .  .  .  The  ancient  econ- 
omy was  not  destroyed  by  the  revolt  of  the 
slaves,  nor  was  the  ruin  of  the  medieval  econ- 
omy effected  by  the  armed  uprising  of  the 
serfs.  These  two  economic  systems  did  not 
succumb  until  the  clients  of  the  Roman  econ- 
omy and  the  ecclesiastics  of  the  medieval 
economy  were  induced  by  a  f  alling-off  of  their 
share  in  the  constantly  decreasing  revenues 
[income]  to  break  their  long-standing  alliance 
with  the  revenue  holders  [recipients  of  in- 
come] and  to  lend  their  support  to  the  final 
revolt  of  the  labouring  classes." 


36  FOREWORD 

To  the  Lorian  theory  of  revolution  we  shall 
return  in  conclusion,  after  we  have  discussed 
the  relationships  of  Loria  to  Marx.  The 
theory  involves  tactical  questions  of  the  ut- 
most interest  and  importance.  Apart  from 
these,  the  crux  of  the  problem  of  transition  to 
the  co-operative  commonwealth  centres,  as 
most  thoughtful  socialists  are  coming  to  see, 
around  the  question  of  the  coercion  to  associ- 
ated labour.  A  fundamental  part  of  the 
socialist  outlook  is  the  belief  that  the  existence 
of  a  special  class  of  recipients  of  income, 
whether  these  be  slave  owners,  feudal  barons, 
or  legal  monopolists  of  land  and  capital,  is  not 
needful  to  modern  civilisation.  We  affirm 
that  the  disappearance  of  such  a  class  (though 
that  class  may  have  played  a  necessary  part 
in  social  evolution)  can  now  be  witnessed  by 
the  enlightened  without  a  single  regret.  ^_But. 
what  is  to  ensure  the  continuance  of  that  high 
social  productivity  which  will  be  necessary  to 
th ^maintenance  of  general  welTbeirig?  Now 


FOREWORD  37 

that  our  race  is  at  length  becoming  truly  self- 
conscious,  will  it  be  possible  "to  transform  the 
economic  natural  force  from  the  ruler  of  man- 
kind to  its  servant?" 

The  closing  sentences  of  The  Economic  Syn- 
thesis show  in  outline  how  Loria  envisages  that 
possibility:  "The  essential  social  contradiction 
can  be  eliminated,  economic  equilibrium  can 
be  established,  only  by  means  of  a  profound 
transformation,  affecting  not  merely  the  proc- 
ess of  distribution  but  also  the  process  of 
production,  relieving  this  latter  process  from 
the  coercion  which  has  hitherto  environed  it 
and  restricted  its  efficiency;  in  other  words  by  _ 
nf  thd_cpercive  association  of 


labour  and  its  replacement  by  the  free  associ- 
jition  of  labour,  Herein  is  to  be  found  the  su- 
preme objective  towards  which  must  converge 
all  the  forces  of  social  renovation."  And  in  a 
terminal  footnote  he  adds  :  "This  is  now  under- 
stood by  all  the  most  enlightened  economists, 
not  excepting  the  socialists,  who  point  out  that 


FOREWORD 

a  reform  which  effects  no  more  than  the  dis- 
tribution of  income  among  the  proletarians, 
unaffected  the  method  by  which 


thaT income,  is  actually  produced,  would  have 
no  more  than  an  extremely  restricted  and  fugi- 
tive effect;  and  that  a  decisive  and^durable 
social  renovation  must  be  initiated  by  a  radical 
metamorphosis  in  the  process  of  production." 

We  have  now  to  ask,  what  does  Loria  con- 
sider the  most  important  elements  of  Marxist 
teaching?  In  his  account  of  thefCommunist 

f  Manifesto  (infra  p.  68)  he  tells  us  that  "this 
writing  contains  the  whole  Marxist  system  in 
miniature,  and  .  .  .  supplies  a  critique  of  all 
doctrinaire,  idealist,  and  Utopian  forms  of 
socialism.  Thus  thcManifesto  voices  thejsuo 
f undamentalsjpf  Marxism :  the  dependence  of 
economic  evolution  upon  the  evolution  of  the 
instrument  of  production,  in  other  words  the 
technicist  determination  of  economics;  and 
the  derivation  of  the  political,  moral,  and  ideal 


FOREWORD  39 

order  from  the  economic  order,  in  other  words 
the  economic  determination  of  sociology — or, 
as  we  should  express  it  to-day,  historical  mate- 
rialism." 

On  pp.  145  and  146  he  tells  us  that  we  must 
"recognise  in  Marx  the  supreme  merit  of  hav- 
ing been  the  first  to  introduce  the  evolutionary 
concept  into  the  domain  of  sociology,  the  first 
to  introduce  it  in  the  only  form  appropriate  to 
social  phenomena  and  social  institutions;  not 
as"  an  "unceasing  and  gradual  upward  move- 
ment," but  as  a  "succession  of  a£e-Iong  rycles_ 
rhythmically  later mptH  by  ^YQlutionary  ex^ 
jplosions."  Speaking  of  Marx's  "masterly  in- 
vestigation into  the  successive  forms  of  the 
technical  instrument,  of  productive  machin- 
ery," he  says  that  Marx  mayjjg  termed^iltbe 
Darwin  of  technology.  .  .  .  This  physiology 
of  industry,  which  is  now  the  least  studied  and 
least  appreciated  of  Marx's  scientific  labours, 
nevertheless  constitutes  his  most  considerable 
and  most  enduring  contribution  to  science." 


40  FOREWORD 

Loria  wrote  his  Karl  Marx  nearly  two  years 
before  the  publication  of-William  PauT-S-XA^ 
State,  of  which  pp.  2  to  7,  the  section  on  "Man 
and  Tools"  is  devoted  to  a  restatement  of  this 
aspect  of  Marxism;  and  the  Italian  economist 
is  not  acquainted  with  the  thought-trend  of 
Walton  Newbold.  As  far  as  the  young  but 
rapidly  growing  and  vigorous  school  of  British 
Marxists  is  concerned,  it  is  certainly  no  longer 
true  that  Marx's  work  as  "the  Darwin  of  tech- 
nology" is  the  least  studied  and  least  appreci- 
ated of  Marx's  scientific  labours. 

To  the  class  struggle  Loria  does  not  refer  at 
any  length  in  this  essay  on  Karl  Marx.  We 
have  already  seen  that  he  recognises  the  enor- 
mous part  the  class  struggle  has  played  in 
history;  but  he  has  throughout  life  remained 
the  man  of  science,  the  man  of  the  study;  he 
has  never  entered  the  arena  as  what  the  French 
term  a  "militant."  In  1904,  when  the  Italian 
Socialist  Party  wished  him  to  be  socialist  par- 
liamentary candidate  for  Turin,  Loria  refused 


FOREWORD  41 

on  the  ground  that  parliamentary  life  would 
interfere  with  his  theoretical  studies;  and  it 
may  be  that  for  these  and  other  reasons  he  is 
less  keenly  impressed  than  are  most  left-wing 
socialists  of  the  profound  importance  of  dif- 
fusing among  the  workers  awareness  of  the 
class  struggle. 

Economic  dqfcrmi'nism  has  been  sufficiently 
considered  in  what  has  gone  before.  If  in  the 
present  study  Loria  says  less  about  it  than 
about  some  of  the  other  elements  of  Marxism, 
this  is  not  because  he  considers  it  of  minor 
importance,  nor  because  he  accepts  it  uncritic- 
ally, but  because  he  has  devoted  an  entire 
volume  to  the  exposition  of  this  aspect  of 
reality. 

It  remains,  then,  to  discuss  Loria's  outlook 
on  the  Marxist  theory  of  value.  It  is  here  that 
Lorianism  will  be  most  strenuously  challenged 
by  those  more  enthusiastic  disciples  of  Marx 
who,  even  if  they  do  not  accept  the  dogma  of 
Marx's  infallibility,  none  the  less  regard  the 


42  FOREWORD 

doctrine  of  value,  based  on  the  labour  theory 
of  value,  as  the  very  heart  of  Marxist  so- 
cialism. 

We  must  remember  that  it  is  natural  for 

persons  who  do  not  gain  their  subsistence  by 

applying  their  labour  power  to  the  production 

of  commodities,  and  whose  claim  to  the  title  of 

"workers"  will  nevertheless   hardly  be  dis- 

puted, to  question  the  labour  theory  of  value. 

/    Bernard  Shaw,  for  example,  in  his  pamphlet 

The   Impossibilities   of  Anarchism,   protests 

that  it  is  "natural  for  the  [manual]  labourer 

to  insist  that  labour  ought  to  be  the  measure 

of  price,  and  that  the  just  wage  of  labour  is  its 

average  product;  but  the  first  lesson  he  has  to 

learn  in  economics  is  that  labour  is  not  and 

,  never  can  be  the  measure  of  price  under  a  com- 

!  petitive  system.     Not  until  the  progress  of 

socialism  replaces  competitive  production  and 

^distribution  with 


centive,  hy  rn]1^rtivkt  production  and  distri- 
butionwlth    fair    play    all    roumLior    its 


FOREWORD  43 

> 

incentive,  will  the  prices  either  of  labour  ox 

just  value." 


Leaving  Shaw  to  the  tender  mercies  of  the 
orthodox  Marxists  who  will  not  be  slow  to 
declare  that  if  he  means  "value"  he  should  not 
say  "price,"  and  that  if  he  thinks  that  "price" 
and  "value"  are  interchangeable  terms  he  is 
not  worth  powder  and  shot,  and  without  our- 
selves venturing  to  rush  into  the  fray,  we  may 
suggest  that  our  propagandists  would  be  less 
inclined  to  make  the  Marxist  theory  of  value 
an  article  of  faith,  "which  faith  except  every- 
one do  keep  whole  and  undefiled  without 
doubt  he  shall  perish  everlastingly"  —  if  they 
could  realise  that  the  theory  is  perhaps  no 
more  than  a  difficult  point  of  abstract  eco- 
nomic doctrine  which  is  not  essential  to  the  use 
of  the  conception  of  surplus  value  as  a  means 
of  making  the  worker  aware  of  the  basic  char- 
acter of  capitalist  exploitation.  Bernstein 
explains  the  matter  very  well  in  the  book 
previously  quoted  (p.  35)  :  "Practical  experi- 


44  FOREWORD 

ence  shows  that  in  the  production  and  distri- 
*  iMbution  of  commodities  a  part  only  of  the 
community  takes  an  active  share,  whilst  an- 
J  I  other  part  consists  of  persons  who  either  enjoy 
I  an  income  for  services  which  have  no  direct 
relation  to  the  process  of  production,  or  have 
an  income  without  working  at  all.  An  essen- 
tially greater  number  of  men  thus  live  on  the 
labour  of  all  those  engaged  in  production  than 
are  actively  engaged  in  it,  and  income  statistics 
show  that  the  classes  not  actively  engaged  in 
production  appropriate,  moreover,  a  much 
greater  share  of  the  total  produced  than  the 
ratio  of  their  number  to  that  of  the  actively 
producing  class.  The  surplus  labour  of  the 
latter  is  an  empiric  fact,  demonstrable  by  expe- 
rience, which  needs  no  deductive  proof. 
Whether  the  Marxist  theory  of  value  be  cor- 
rect or  not,  is  quite  immaterial  to  the  proof 
of  surplus  labour.  It  is  in  this  respect  no 
demonstration,  but  only  a  means  of  analysis 
and  illustration." 


FOREWORD  45 

The  professional  economist,  however,  can- 
not rest  content  with  these  loose  formulations. 
Loria  feels  that  there  is  a  void  in  the  Marxist 
system,  and  it  seems  to  us  (though  Loria 
nowhere  tells  us  so  in  set  terms)  that  the 
Lorian  doctrine  of  differentiated  income,  the 
most  essential  part  of  the  Italian  economist's 
teaching,  is  really  an  attempt  to  restate  the 
theory  of  surplus  value  in  a  form  absolutely 
proof  against  enemy  attack.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
the  conception,  however  interesting,  is  far  less 
easy  to  convey  to  the  uninstructed  mind,  and 
it  is  unlikely,  for  propaganda  purposes,  to  re- 
place the  simple  formula  of  surplus  value. 
But  is  it  not  essential  that  those  who  under- 
take to  teach  socialist  economics  should  them- 
selves fully  understand  the  objections  to  the 
Marxist  theory  of  value,  and  that  they  should 
have  a  clear  grasp  of  Loria's  alternative  doc- 
trine of  the  nature  of  capitalist  exploitation? 

Let  us  return,  in  conclusion,  to  the  Lorian 


46  FOREWORD 

theory  of  revolution.  If  we  may  summarise 
that  theory  in  colloquial  phraseology,  it  is  that, 
(while  economic  evolution  must  pave  the  way 
for  revolution,  the  final  stages  of  revolution 
have  been  effected  in  the  past,  and  can  only  be 
effected  in  the  future,  through  the  co-opera- 
tion of  "disgruntled  intellectuals."  These  are 
the  "unproductive  labourers"  of  Loria's 
scheme,  who  have  served  as  hirelings  of  the 
master  class  during  the  prosperous  phase  of 
an  economic  system;  but  in  the  declining  phase 
of  that  system,  when  the  diminution  of  income 
curtails  the  amount  available  for  these  second- 
ary recipients  of  income,  they  turn  against  the 
primary  recipients,  their  employers,  make 
common  cause  with  the  subject  class,  and  give 
the  death-blow  to  the  old  order,) 

This  may  possibly  have  been  true  of  the  fall 
of  the  slave  economy,  and  it  may  possibly  have 
been  true  of  the  fall  of  the  medieval  economy; 
but  we  do  not  think  it  is  true  that  a  revolution 
of  the  non-proprietary  classes  under  capitalism 


FOREWORD  47 

is  "foredoomed  to  failure"  unless  these  classes 
secure  the  support  of  the  unproductive  labour- 
ers. Their  support  for  a  genuinely  prole- 
tarian revolution  can  hardly  be  expected,  on 
Loria's  own  theory.  The  intellectuals  who 
aided  in  the  overthrow  of  the  slave  economy, 
and  the  intellectuals  who  helped  to  subvert  the 
feudal  order  and  to  promote  the  bourgeois  and 
industrial  revolution,  did  so,  says  Loria,  in 
order  to  maintain  their  position  as  "recipients 
of  income,"  to  maintain  their  position  as  mem- 
bers of  a  privileged  class.  What  have  such 
as  they  to  gain  from  a  proletarian  revolution, 
which  will  abolish  class,  will  put  an  end  to 
exploitation,  will  do  away  for  ever  with  the 
private  appropriation  of  income  and  surplus 
value? 

We  need  only  turn  our  eyes  eastward  to  see 
how  such  "intellectuals"  will  hail  the  revolu- 
tion of  the  propertiless.  Despite  the  on- 
slaughts of  the  capitalist  powers,  the  Russian 
Socialist  Federative  Soviet  Republic  has  lived 


48  FOREWORD 

long  enough  to  show  the  sort  of  help  socialists 
may  expect  from  the  Kerenskys.  Men  of  this 
calibre,  "people  whose  interests  lie  in  the  op- 
posite direction,"  even  if  they  "are  carried 
away  by  the  new  ideas  and  enter  the  lists  for 
the  new  order  of  things"  (Boudin,  The 
Theoretical  System  of  Karl  Marx,  1918)^  are 
the  real  revolution  comes,  and 


endeavour  jo_lav  the  red  spectre  they  have 
"TieTpedjo. 


In  truth,  a  revolution  foredoomed  to  failure 
would  be  that  of  proletarians  who  should  de- 
pend in  large  measure  upon  the  support  of 
disgruntled  intellectuals.  A  serfs  life  was  on 
the  average  better  than  that  of  a  chattel  slave; 
a  wage  labourer's  life  is  on  the  average  better 
than  was  that  of  slave  or  serf.  But  neither  the 
replacement  of  slavery  by  feudalism,  nor  the 
replacement  of  feudalism  by  capitalism,  se- 
cured the  emancipation  of  labour  in  any  ade- 
quate sense  of  that  term.  (All  that  a  proletarian 
revolution  carried  through  with  the  help  of 


FOREWORD  49 

middle-class  intellectuals  is  likely  to  oring 
about  is  some  form  of  Fabian  collectivism  or 
>$£ate  capitalism — in  a  word,  the  servile  ^tate. 
As  far  as  the  productive  labourers  are  con- 
cerned the  revolution  would  be  a  sham.  The 
form  of  the  state  might  be  revolutionised,  but 
the  authoritative  state  would  endure,  and  pro- 
duction would  be  effected,  not  by  the  free,  but 
by  the  coercive  association  of  labour,' 

What  Loria  has  failed  to  recognise  is  that 
the  conditions  of  the  problem  are  now  radi- 
cally changed.  As  he  says,  in  the  old  revolu- 
tions the  rebels  were  divided  and  disorganised, 
were  not  sure  of  themselves,  and  were 
uncertain  of  the  ends  they  would  attain.  As 
far  as  the  workers  were  concerned,  revolt  only 
was  possible,  not  revolution.  It  is  otherwise 
to-day;  and  still  more  will  it  be  otherwise  the 
day  after  to-morrow.  Thanks  to  the  new 
forms  of  organisation  now  being  worked  out: 
thanks  to  industrial  unionism  and  the  growth 
of  the  workers  committees  and  shop  stewards 


50  FOREWORD 

movements ;  and  thanks  above  all  tqindepend- 
ent  working  clasj_education,  which  is  forging 
the  new  weapons  and  simultaneously  teaching 
the  workers  how  to  use  them,  which  is  fashion- 
ing the  limbs  of  the  co-operative  common- 
wealth within  the  womb  of  the  capitalist  order 
—thanks  to  all  these  things,  |he  workers  of  the 
day  after  to-morrow  need  not  put  their  trust 
in  the  frail  reed  of  the  support  of  intel- 
lectuals. Once  more  we  raise  the  Marxist 
slogan  and  cry:  "The  emancipation  of  the 
workers  must  be  the  work  of  the  workers 
themselves.'^ 

And  if  we  modify  another  Marxist  watch- 
word, quoted  on  p.  154  below,  that  force  is  the 
midwife  of  every  old  society  pregnant  with  a 
new  one,  it  is  only  to  say  that,  while  we  do 
not  repudiate  force  (which  the  skille4_ac 
cTmcHeu^ever  has  in  reserve) ,  new  times  bring 
new  methods.  The  self-educated  workers  of 
the  future  may  have  no  occasion  to  use  force, 
and  certainly  need  not  await  the  aid  of  Loria's 


FOREWORD  51 

unproductive  labourers.  For  the  day  draws 
nigh,  and  on  that  day  the  workers  will  achieve 
their  own  salvation.  They  will  achieve  the 
salvation  of  all  the  workers,  and  indeed  of  all 
the  world  of  man;  but  it  will  not  be  all  the 
workers  that  will  actively  participate.  No 
more  will  be  possible  than  that  there  should 
be  a  considerable  minority  of  educated  work- 
ers. A  minority  they  must  inevitably  remain 
until  after  the  social  revolution;  but  a  little 
leaven  carTleaven  a  large  lump.  The  midwife 
7>t  revolution  is  not  force  but — independent 
working  class  education. 


In  a  word,  the  "ctynamogenic  function"  of 
which  Loria  speaks  (infra  pp.  159  and  160), 
attaches  not  to  poverty  but  to  slavery.  (TheV 
poor  have  seldom  failed  to  realise  their  pov- 
erty, and  poverty  when  extreme  has  at  times 
led  to  revolt;  but  it  is  the  new  realisation  of 
the  slavery  of"wagedom  that  is  organising  the 
workers  for  tfip.  social  revolution^  By  means 
of  Marxist  education  "the  proletarian  is  break- 


52  FOREWORD 

ing  his  chains  and  entering  upon  an  era  of 
conscious  and  glorious  freedom." 

Do  we  seem  to  imply  that  there  is  no  place 
in  our  movement  for  middle-class  intellect- 
uals? Such  is  not  our  meaning.  They  have 
played  in  the  past  a  role  of  supreme  import- 
ance, and  may  still  have  a  notable  part  to  play 
in  the  future.  But  the  intellectuals  for  whom 
there  is  a  place  are  not  the  kind  of  intellectuals 
described  in  Loria's  theory  of  revolution,  and 
the  role  of  the  intellectual  is  no  longer  the  one 
which  he  assigns.  It  is  not  those  intellectuals 
who  are  dissatisfied  with  their  reallotment  of 
income,  not  those  who  are  discontented  with 
their  ration  of  loaves  and  fishes,  not  those  who 
sigh  for  the  vanishing  cakes  and  ale,  who  will 
help  the  coming  of  the  definitive  social  revo- 
lution. Rarely  indeed,  too,  is  the  function  of 
the  socialist  intellectual  the  function  of  leader- 
ship. To  an  increasing  extent,  under  the  new 
conditions,  he  tends  to  be  no  more  than  the 
fifth  wheel  of  the  revolutionary  coach. 


FOREWORD  53 

The  right  sort  of  intellectual  had  a  function 
in  the  past;  it  was  to  help  the  workers  to  over- 
come their  division  and  disorganisation,  to 
help  them  to  be  sure  of  themselves,  to  help 
them  to  clear  views  of  the  ends  they  must  at- 
tain. That  work  is  afoot.  The  ferment  has 
been  created:  created  by  such  men  as  Marx, 
whose  abilities  would  have  secured  him  ease, 
comfort,  wealth,  had  he  made  his  peace  with 
bourgeoisdom,  but  who  was  a  revolutionist l>y 
deliberate  choice;  by  such  men  as  Engels,  a 
well-to-do  manufacturer;  by  such  men  as 

•S\/^s^\^-\s<}~^~\-^~s^~ r.  e  \  \ 

Lona  himself,  a  university  professor;  by  such 
men  as  the  American,  Scott  Nearijjg,  who  re-" 
cently  forfeitecThis  academic  position  because 
he  would  not  keep  the  class  struggle  out  of  his 
lectures  on  economics.  Can  it  be  said  that  men 
like  Herzen,  Bakunin,  and  Kropotkin,  have 
been,  or  that  men  like  Trotzky  and  Lenin  are, 
the  disgruntled  intellectuals  of  Loria's  theory 
of  revolution?  Quite  apart  from  leadership 
under  such  peculiar  conditions  as  obtain  in 


54  FOREWORD 

Russia,  there  is  work  for^ogialist  intellectuals, 
'the  work  of  promoting  independent  working- 
)    class  education,  the  work  of  assisting  in  the 
\  spread  of  the  ferment  generated  by  the  writ- 
ings of  earlier  revolutionary  thinkers. 

Our  conviction  that  we  ourselves, Declassed 
bourgeojs,  have  a  modest  function,  that  though 
not  part  of  the  team,  not  even  spokes  of  a  fifth 
wheel,  we  may  at  least  help  to  complete  the 
outfit  as  little  dogs  under  the  waggon,  is  wit- 
nessed by  our  translation  of  Achille  Loria's 
monograph  on  Karl  Marx. 

EDEN  AND  CEDAR  PAUL. 
LONDON, 

The  Centenary  of  Karl  Marx. 


KARL  MARX 


KARL  MARX 

CHAPTER  I 

IT  IS  unquestionably  one  of  the  strangest  of 
anomalies  exhibited  by  the  polychrome  flora 
of  human  thought  that/revolutionary  blossoms 
should  so  frequently  spring  from  flrjstnrr^tjc 
seeds^Jind  that  the  most  incendiary  and  rebel- 
lious "spirits  should  emerge  from  a  domestic 
and  social  environment  compounded  of  con- 
servatism and  reaction./  Yet  when  we  look 

•*^^ 

closely  into  the  matter,  we  find  it  less  strange 
than  it  may  have  appeared  at  first  sight.  It  is, 
in  fact,  not  difficult  to  understand  that  those 
only  who  live  in  a  certain  milieu  can  fully 
apprehend  its  vices  and  its  constitutional  de- 
fects, which-  are  hidden  as  by  a  cloud  from 
those  who  live  elsewhere. 

It  is  true  enough  that  many  dwellers  in  the 
57 


58  KARL  MARX 

perverted  environment  lack  the  intelligence 
which  would  enable  them  to  understand  its 
defects.    Others,  again,  are  induced  by  consid- 
erations of  personal  advantage  to  close  their 
eyes  to  the  evils  they  discern,  or  cynically  to 
ignore  them.    But  if  a  man  who  grows  to  ma- 
turity in  such  an  environment  be  at  once  in- 
telligent and  free  from  base  elements,  the  sight 
of  the  evil  medium  from  which  he  himself  has 
sprung  will  arouse  in  his  mind  a  righteous 
wrath  and  a  spirit  of  indomitable  rebellion, 
/will  transform  the  easy-going  and   cheerful 
\  patrician   into  the  prophet  and   the   revolu- 
J  tionary. 

Such  has  been  the  lot  of  the  great  rebels  of 
the  world,  of  men  like  Dante,  Voltaire,  Byron, 
Kropotkin,  and  Tolstoi,  who  all  sprang  from 
the  gentle  class,  and  whose  birthright  placed 
them  among  the  owners  of  property.  Similar 
was  the  lot  of  Karl  Marx. 

It  would,  indeed,  be  difficult  to  imagine  a 
more  typically  refined  and  aristocratic  entour- 


KARL  MARX  59 

age  than  the  one  wherein  the  future  high  priest 
of  the  revolution  was  born  and  passed  his  early 
years.  He  was  born  at  Treves  on  May  5,  1818. 
His  ancestors  on  both  sides  had  been  distin- 
guished £abbis?  famed  for  their  commentaries 
on  the  scriptures.  The  father's  family  was 
originally  known  as  Mordechai,  whilst  the 
mother's  family,  Pressburg  by  name,  had  come 
from  Hungary  to  settle  in  Holland.  His 
father,  an  employee  in  the  state  service,  be- 
came a  Christian,  and  the  whole  family  was 
baptised  when  Karl  was  five  years  of  age.  As 
he  grew  up,  the  young  man  was  an  intimate  in 
the  best  houses  of  the  district,  and  one  of  his 
closest  friends  was  Edgar  von  Westphalen, 
who  subsequently  became  a  member  of  the  re- 
actionary ManteufTel  ministry.  In  1843  Marx 
married  Westphalen's  sister,  the  beautiful  and 
brilliant  Jenny.  The  match  proved  well  as- 
sorted, and  was  blessed  by  a  love  so  intense  and 
so  unfailing  as  to  lead  a  certain  German  pastor 
to  say  that  it  had  been  ratified  in  heaven. 


60  KARL  MARX 

Thus  by  origin  Marx  belonged  to  jm__cx: 
tremely  ancient  stock  devotedjo  the  accumu- 
lation of  wealth,  whilst  his  marriage  united 
him  to  the_racgj)f  German  feiidatnrTes,  fie rge 
-^aladins  of  the  throne  and  of  the  altar.  Is  it 
not  then  truly  remarkable  that  from  such  an 
environment,  eminently  calculated  to  foster 

ideas    of  (obscurantisnT^nd    reaction,    there 

^~-       +  -^ 

should  emerge/the  most  brilliant,  most  con- 
£w    sistent,    and    most   invincible    example    of    a 
iP  )  thinker  and  revolutionary  agitatorPj) 

(  Unquestionably,  Marx's  thought,  essentially1 
slow-moving,  laborious,  and  ever  subjected  to 
a  rigorous  process  of  self-criticism,  does  not 
seem  at  first  sight  characteristically  negational 
and  rebellious.  In  youth,  indeed,  he  was  still 
no  more  than  the  earnest  student?  Engels  tells 
us  that  he  closed  his  university  career  at  Bonn 
in  1841  by  voting  aJjnJliantjhesisjipQri  thg  \ 

philosophy  of  Epicurus,  while  in  leisure  mo- 
J>~^^*^J^~^^^-r^J 

ments  Marx  penned  verses  of  no  mean  order. 
These  latter  compositions  display  numerous 


KARL  MARX  61 

defects  of  style;  they  are  heavy  and  turgid;  the 
movement  is  sluggish;  their  sonorous  gravity 
reminds  the  reader  of  a  company  of  medieval 
warriors  in  heavy  armour  mounting  the  grand 
staircase:  but  they  are  none  the  less  distin- 
guished by  remarkable  profundity  of  thought, 
and  they  may  be  looked  upon  as  versified 
philosophy  rather  than  as  poetry  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  term. 

In  the  following  year  we  find  Marx  at  Co- 
logne as  editor  of  the  "Rhenish  Gazette."  His 
editorials,  it  is  true,  were  at  first  devoted  to 
harmless  topics  of  general  interest;  but  he  soon 
began  to  turn  his  attention  to  social  questions, 
such  as  forest  thefts,  the  subdivision  ofTandecl 
property,  the  condition  of  the  peasantry  in  the 
Moselle  district,  and  Fr^nr^  g^HJSTT  To 
this  last  doctrine,  the  editor  declared  himself  fa  ,r 
adverse,  while  professing  a  great  personal  ad- 
miration for  Proudhon.  But  the  discussion 
upon  socialism^  revealed  to  him  his  own  ig- 
norance and  incompetence,  and  induced  him 


62  KARL  MARX 

to  withdraw  from  the  journalistic  arena  that 
he  might  devote  himself  to  study.  An  excuse 
for  resigning  his  editorship  was  furnished  in 
1843,  when  the  "Rhenish  Gazette"  found  it 
necessary  to  assume  an  extremely  cautious  tone 
in  order  to  avoid  the  attentions  of  the  police. 
But,  like  all  the  more  brilliant  and  free- 
spirited  among  his  contemporaries,  he  soon 
found  himself  incommoded  by  the  obscuran- 
tism_nf  Prussia,  fljri}  accompanied  by  his  young 
wife,  he  hastened  to  ^aris,  the  city  of  light, 
where  there  shortly  assemBled  a  circle  of  in- 
tellectual rebels  from  all  lands— France,  Ger- 
many, England,  Italy,  and  Russia.  The  Rus- 
sians predominated,  and  indeed  we  learn  from 
Marx  himself  that  the  most  fervent  of  his  dis- 
ciples at  this  date  were  drawn  from  among 
the  scions  of  the  Russian  nobility  and  upper 
bourgeoisie,  who,  when  they  returned  to  their 
count ry,  were  unhesitatingly  to  become  the 
s^cophants^f  authority.  In  this  cohort  of 
spintuaTrebels  he  assumed  from  the  first  the 


KARL  MARX  63 

position  of  dictator,  and  none  competed  for  the 
crown  with  the  revolutionary  Caesar. 

People  were  already  beginning  to  talk  of 
the  Marxists,  and  the  police  made  a  black 
cross  against  the  name  of  a  Parisian  cafe  where 
the  associates  of  Marx  were  wont  to  assemble. 
He  struck  up  a  friendship  with  Heinrich 
.Heine,  and  one  day,  accompanied  by  his  staff, 
he  paid  a  formal  visit  to  the  poet  and  declared 
that  the  latter  ought  to  divide  among  the  exiles 
the  pension  granted  him  by  Guizot,  to  which 
suggestion  Heine  cynically  replied  that  he 
could  spend  the  pension  more  profitably  upon 
himself,  ^^arxjhadayet^closerjntimacy with 
Proudhon,  with  whom  he  passed  long  everj- 
ings  talking  aboutHegel  ancLdiscussing;  the 
problems  of  socialism ;  but  this  friendship  was 
destined  ere  long  to  be  replaced  by  fierce  hos- 
tility, aroused  by  fundamental  differences  of 
opinion. 

In  1844,  in  conjunction  with  Arnold  Ruge, 
Marx  founded  the  "Franco-German  Year 


64  KARL  MARX 

Book,"  of  which,  however,  there  appeared  but 
one  volume,  containing  writings  by  Marx  him- 
self on  the  philosophy  of  law  and  upon  the 
Jews,  in  addition  to  letters  from  Holland,  and 
articles  by  Engels,  Heine,  Freiligrath,  and 
other  more  or  less  rebellious  spirits. 

These  outward  activities  represent  nothing 
more  than  an  interlude  or  partial  episode  in 
the  series  of  his  essential  occupations,  science 
and  philosophy.  Engels'  contribution  to  the 
"Year  Book,"  a  criticism  of  political  economy, 
initiated  between  the  two  thinkers  a  friend- 
ship which  time  was  to  strengthen  and  to  ren- 
der indissoluble.  The  first  fruit  of  this  friend- 
ship was  a  joint  work  entitled  The  Holy  Fam- 
ily, a  criticism  of  the  philosophy  of  Bruno 
Bauer  and  his  followers  (1845),  stuffed  with 
sallies  and  6^pKic}ayings  of  doubtful  taste  and 
still  more  doubtful  value.  The_ young  men 
next  turned  to  a  weighter  task,  a  criticism  of 
posthegelian  philosophy,  whicli_filled  Iwo 
huge  octavo  manuscript  volumes,  but  has  never 


KARL  MARX  65 

found  a  publisher.  Nevertheless,  Marx  tells 
"us,  this^normous  labour  cannot  be  regarded  as 
utterly  wasted,  for  it  enabled  the  writers  to 
gain  an  understanding  of  themselves,  and 
traced  the  lines  by  which  henceforward  they 
were  to  be  safely  guided  through  the  labyrinth 
of  social  investigation. 

But  revolutionary  agitation  (which  Marx 
continued  even  amid  his  philosophical  medi- 
tations), and  the^editorship  of  the  definitely 
antiprussian  journal  "Forward,77  now  attracted 
the  hostile  attention  of  the  Prussian  govern- 
ment, upon  whose  demand,  in  January,  1845, 
Guizot  suppressed  the  periodical  and  expelled 

Marx  from  France.    Marx  removed  to  Brus- 

— « -<         — ~ 

sels,  where  Engels  was  living,  and  for  the  first 
time  devoted  himself  to  prolonged  and  pro- 
found labours.  In  the  year  1847,  he  published 
in  the  Belgian  capital  his  book  The  Poverty 
of  Philosophy^  a  Reply  to  Proudhon's  Philos- 
ophy of  Poverty f  a  harsh  criticism  of  the  "eco- 
nomic contradictions"  of  his  rival.  Marx  re- 


66  KARL  MARX 

proached  Proudhon  for  complete  ignorance 
of  that  Hegelian  philosophy  which  Proudhon 
tried  to  apply  to  economics,  and  reproached 
the  French  socialist  yet  more  for  arbitrary  and 
fallacious  expositions,  for  the  idealisation  of 
a  tortuous  series  of  fantastic  categories  (di- 
vision of  labour,  machines,  competition,  rent, 
etc.),  declaring  that  Proudhon  confined  him- 
self in  each  case  to  an  examination  of  the  good 
and  the  bad  effects  without  ever  troubling  to 
throw  light  upon  the  nature  of  the  phenomena 
under  consideration  or  upon  the  course  of  their 
formation  and  development.  The  criticism  is 
apt,  but  might  well  rebound  upon  Marx  him- 
self, enmeshed  at  this  epoch  in  a  series  of  cate- 
gories whose  progressive  evolution  he  arbi- 
trarily asserted.  Further,  Marx  fiercely 
criticised  Proudhon's  theory  of  "constituted 
value,"  according  to  which  the  reduction  of 
value  to  labour  cannot  be  effected  in  extant 
society,  and  must  be  deferred  to  the  future  so- 
ciety, fashioned  in  the  brain  of  the  thinker. 


KARL  MARX  67 

It  is  well  to  point  out  that  Marx,  though  in  the 
first  volume  of  Capital  he  conceives  the  reduc- 
tion of  value  to  the  quantity  of  effective  labour 
to  be  one  of  the  immanent  laws  of  capitalist 
economy,  nevertheless  admits  in  the  third  vol- 
ume that  in  the  capitalist  economic  phase  value 
neither  is  nor  can  be  reduced  to  the  quantity 
of  labour,  and  that  value  as  measured  by  la- 
bour is  merely  an  archetype  or  suprasensible 
entity,  but  not  a  concrete  reality.  Substantially 
this  means  that  Marx's  labour  measure  _of 
value  is,  after  all,  not  essentially  different  from 

the  constituted  value  of  Proudhon.    But  amid 

" — * 
these  unjust  or  excessive  criticisjns,  (Marx^s 

book  gives  utterance  to  the  idea(  profoundly 
true,  and~at  that  time  practically  olrlgingl/Jthat 
economic  relationships  are  no  mere  arDJtra.ry  /  v 
products  or  derivatives  of  human  will,  but^are  \ 
the  inevitable  issue  of  the  existing  condition  I 
of  th^Jorces  of  production^  The  deduction 
drawn   from  this  is  that  Utopian   socialism, 
which  exhausts  itself  in  futile  declamations  or 


68  KARL  MARX 

fin  yet  more  futile  imaginary  reconstructions 
of  the  social  order,  must  yield  place  to  scien- 
tific socialism,  wholly  devoted  to  the  analysis 
of  the  necessary  process  of  economic  evolution 
and  to  the  possibility  of  accelerating  that  evo- 
lution. 

,  The  same  idea  can  be  read  between  the  lines 
of  the  Lecture  on  Free  Exchange  delivered  by 
Marx  at  Brussels  on  January  9,  1849.  Herein 
he  asserted  that  socialism  ought  to  declare  in 
favour  of  freedom  of  trade,  for  this,  hastening 

<^the  dissolution  of  the  old  nationalities  and  ac- 
centuating the  contrast  between  the  bourge- 
oisie and  the  proletariat,  would  precipitate  the 

^dissolution  of  the  capitalist  economy.  But  the 
idea  is  affirmed  far  more  categorically  in  the 
Manifesto  of  the  Communist  Party,  the  joint 
composition  of  Engels  and  Marx,  published  in 

,.,ithe  year  1848,  embodying  the  first  and  most 

^  decisive  formulation  of  the  latterV  teaching. 
Even  though  some  of  his  special  theories,  sub- 
sequently to  secure  fuikr.  development  in 


KARL  MARX 


69 


Capital,  are  but  cursorily  sketched   in  the 
Manifesto,  even  though  some  of  these  theories 
(for  example,  the  theory  of  wages,  stated  to  be 
the  price  of  "wage  labour"  instead  of  being 
the  price  of  "labour  power")  are  still  in  an 
undeveloped  and  imperfect  state,  it  is  never- 
theless  true   that   this   writing   contains   the     / 
whole  Marxist  system  in  miniature,  and  that  it 
supplies  a  critique  of  all  doctrinaire,  idealist, 
and  Utopian  forms  of  socialism. 

Thus  the  Manifesto  voices  the  two  funda- 
mentals_pf  Marxism:  the  dependence_of  eco-(jM 
nomic_evolution  upon  the  evolution  of  the  in-  ? 
strument  of  production,   in  other  words  the 
technicist  determination  of  economics,  and 


derivation  of  the  political,  moral 


order  from  the  econ 


the  economic  determination 


as 


/  so  do  lot 
historical 


70  KARL  MARX 

in  the  hands  of  those  who  hold  economic 
power,  or  in  the  hands  of  their  representatives 
and  agents,  renders  absurd  the  idea  of  effecting 
by  peaceful  political  means  any  amelioration 
in  the  condition  of  the  proletarian  classes,  and 
indicates  to  the  dispossessed  that  revolution  is 
their  only  hope  of  salvation.}  To  revolution, 
then,  or  to  the  compact  federation  which  can 
alone  pave  the  way  for  revolution,  the  Mani- 
festo incites  the  sufferers  of  the  world  with  the 
historic  phrase:  "Workers  of  the  world, 
unite."  The  epoch-making  significance  of  the 
Manifesto  is  not  to-day  disputed  by  the  most 
resolute  adversaries  of  that  document.  It  is, 
jn  fact,  the  Declaration  of  Rights  of  the 
Fourth  Estate^the  MagnaJIhart&of  the  revo- 
lutionary proletariat,  the  oriflamme  of  fire  and 
blood,  the  standard  round  which  the  insurrec- 
tionary phalanxes  have  ever  since  mustered. 

Hardly  had  the  message  been  launched 
upon  the  world  when  the  young  leader  hoped 
to  translate  it  into  action,  for  the  movements 


KARL  MARX  71 

of  1848  and  1849  led  the  rebel  masses  to  enter- 
tain new  and  bolder  aspirations.  Expelled 
_jfrom  jelgium^JMarx  first  went  to  Paris,  and 
Chastened  thence  to  his  German  homeland,  now 
in  a  ferment,  assuming  there  editorial  charge 
of  the  "New  Rhenish  Gazette."  But  although 
the  skill  of  the  able  editor  was  for  a  brief  pe- 
riod successful  in  saving  the  barque  of  the 
imperilled  gazette  from  the  waves  of  police 
persecution,  a  day  soon  arrived  when  the  situ- 
ation became  untenable.  An  appeal  to  the  / 
German  people  published  in  the  columns  of 
the  journal  advocating  a  refusal  to  pay  taxes 
led  to  its  suppression  and  to  two  criminal 
charges  against  the  editor.  Triumphantly 
acquitted  bv  the  Cologne  jury,  but  none  the 
"Jess  exiled  by  the  Prussian  governmer^  he  im- 
mediately returned  to  Paris,  where  it  seemed 
to  his  restless  imagination  that  events  were 
taking  a  more  favourable  turn.  But  France 
proved  a  no  securer  refuge  than  Germany,  and 
the  Parisian  government  propounded  to  our 


72  KARL  MARX 

agitator  a  peremptory  dilemma,  jptrrm^nt  in 
ihe  remote  department  of  Morbihan  or  exile 
from  France.  He  was  not  likely  to  hesitate  in 
Tils  choice,  and  indeed  at  this  juncture  was  glad 
to  accept  an  invitation  from  the  executive  com- 
mittee of  the  Communist  Party,  then  centred 
in  London,  to  remove  with  his  devoted  wife  to 
that  great  metropolis  (1849). 


CHAPTER  II 

(IN  LONDON  the  saddest  trials  awaited  him, 
for  poverty,  gloomy  companion,  sat  ever  at  his 
board  from  the  day  of  his  entry  into  the  British 
capital  down  to  the  hour  of  his  last  breath. 
One  after  another  of  his  children  died  in  the 
unwholesome  dwellings  of  his  exile,  and  he 
was  forced  to  beg  from  friends  and  comrades 
the  scanty  coins  needed  to  pay  for  their  burial; 
he  and  his  family  had  to  make  the  best  of  a 
diet  of  bread  and  potatoes;  he  was  forced  to 
pawn  his  watch  and  his  clothing,  to  sell  his 
books,  to  tramp  the  streets  in  search  of  any 
help  that  might  offer;  the  day  came  when, 
under  the  lash  of  hunger,  he  was  compelled 
to  contemplate  seeking  work  as  railway  clerk, 
of  placing  his  daughters  out  to  service,  of  mak- 

73 


74  KARL  MARX 

ing  them  governesses  or  actresses,  whilst 
himself  retiring  with  his  unhappy  wife  to 
dwell  in  the  proletarian  quarter  of  White- 
chapel. 

The  severity  of  these  sufferings  did  much  to 
add  a  tinge  of  gall  to  a  character  naturally 
_acerb,  a  character  which  amid_the_  upheavals 
and  horrors  of  exile  frequently^-sliQwedJjtself 
far  from  amiable.  Mingled  sentiments  of 
grief  and  anger  fill  our  minds  when,  in  Marx's 
private  letters  to  Engels,  we  trace  the  mani- 
festations of  this  harshness,  which  left  him  un- 
moved by  the  misfortunes  of  his  dearest 
friends,  which  led  him  to  make  any  use  he 
could  of  these  friends  and  then  to  overwhelm 
them  with  reproaches  and  accusations,  which_ 
showed  itself  (and  this  is  the  worst  of  all^n  a 
jealous  hatred  of  comrades  less  unfortunate 
4lian  himself?  Deplorable  from  every  point 
his  conduct  towards  Freiligrath 
and  Lassalle,  in  especial  towards  Lassalle, 
who  had  shown  him  the  utmost  friendliness, 


KARL  MARX  75 

had  given  him  ample  financial  assistance,  had 
entertained  him  in  Berlin,  had  helped  him  to 
find  a  publisher;  for  Marx  subsequently  cen- 
sured Lassalle's  works  with  much  acrimony, 
beheld  his  triumphs  askance,  and  commented 
upon  the  incidents  of  Lassalle's  death  in  a  tone 
of  tepid  apology.  But  you  well-fed  folk  who 
amid  easy  circumstances  arc_studying  the  life. 
of  our  agitator,  be  not  too  ready  to  blame  him, 
and  before  stoning  him  bethink  yourselves 
of  all  the  miseries  the  exile  must  suffer, 
of  all  the  tortures  amid  which  he  must  bear 


Vainly  did  he  endeavour  by  hard  work  to 
free  hir^self  from  the  sad  restraints  of  pov- 
erty. /It  is  true  he  was  able  to  place  articles 
with  the  "New  York  Tribune,"  writing  for 
this  paper  essays  on  political,  economic,  and 
financial  questions,  which  secured  much  ap- 
preciation. But  the  pay  was  only  one  pound 
per  article,  and  he  could  write  but  one  article 
a  week.  Collaboration  in  the  production  of 


76  KARL  MARX 

an  American  encyclopaedia,  to  be  paid  at  the 
rate  of  two  dollars  a  page,  seemed  to  promise 
more  ample  funds,  and  with  feverish  anxiety 
he  devoted  himself  to  the  production  of  ar- 
ticles on  the  most  varied  topics,  well  stored 
with  facts.  But  this  source  of  income,  limited 
at  best,  was  suddenly  interrupted  by  the  out- 
break of  the  American  civil  war.  The  loss 
was  not  adequately  compensated  by  the  possi- 
bility of  occasionally  inserting  some  poorly 
paid  contribution  in  a  German  newspaper  like 
the  "New  Oder  Gazette"  or  in  one  of  the 
Viennese  periodicals. 

He  was  lucky  in  that  certain  turns  of  fortune 
favoured  him  from  those  sources  of  property 
and  inheritance  which  he  condemned  and  at- 
tacked with  such  persistence  and  vehemence. 
He  had  a  legacy  from  his  mother-in-law;  a 
legacy  from  his  mother;  a  trifling  legacy  from 
an  aunt;  and  Wilhelm  Wolff,  a  companion  in 
exile,  bequeathed  him  £800.  An  uncle  in 
Holland,  whom  he  had  begged  for  some 


KARL  MARX  77 

trifling  help,  gave  him  £160;  from  Lassalle 
ajidFreiligrath  came  generous  gifts;  and 
Droncke,  another  companion  in  exile,  gave 
£250  to  enable  him  to  complete  the  scientific 
work  on  which  he  was  engaged. 

JBut  none  of  these  casual  resources,  however 
extensive,  would  have  saved  him  from^uin 
^had  it  not  been  forthe  providential  assistance  A 
of  his  friend  Friedrich  Engels,  who  applied 
himself  to  the  care  of  Marx  with  inexhaustible 
generosity,  and^_j34ththetenderness  of  a 
woman.  Engels,  indeed,  will  secure  a  splen- 
did place  in  the  history  of  socialist  thought, 
were  it  only  because  of  the  way  in  which  he 
devoted  himself  to  Marx.  It  was  through 
Engels  that  Marx  was  enabled  to  continue  his 
studies  and  to  complete  the  work  which  is  his. 
title  to  eternal  fame.  Engels,  a  well-to-do  cot- 
ton spinner  at  Manchester,  gladly  responded 
to  his  friend's  unremitting  requests  for  aid, 
succouring  him  in  every  emergency.  Engels 
was  an  expert  upon  military  topics,  and  penned 


78  KARL  MARX 

articles  which  Marx  passed  on  to  the  "Trib- 
une" and  to  the  encyclopaedia,  articles  for 
which  Marx  was  paid;  Ensels  sent  Marx 
weekly  subsidies,  and  frequently  despatched 
gifts  of  port  wine;  he  made  presents  of  £100 
or  £150  at  a  time;  and  at  length,  when  his 
business  prospered,  he  gave  his  friend  a  regu- 
lar allowance  of  £350  a  year. 

NotTeven  these  strokes  of  good  luck  sufficed, 
it  is  true,  to  restore  a  satisfactory  balance  to 
Marx's  finances,  for  he  was  a  Jbad_jnanager, 
and  the  disorder  was  probably  incurable. 
However,  they  enabled  our  thinker  to  furnish 
aid  to  companions  yet  more  unfortunate,  to 
Pieper,  Eccarius,  and  Dupont;  they  enabled 
^im  to  escape  from  the  worst  extremities  of 
poverty  and  to  establish  himself  in  life  under 
conditions  more  worthy  of  an  honest  and  re- 
spectable bourgeois.  He  was  able  to  move 
from  the  decayed  neighbourhood  of  Soho 
Square  and  to  settle  in  Maitland  Park  Road 
on  Haverstock  Hill;  it  became  possible  for 


KARL  MARX  79 

him  to  secure  a  good  education  for  his  daugh- 
ters, to  have  them  taught  French  and  Italian, 
drawing  and  music;  he  could  weigh  the  finan- 
cial status  of  aspirants  to  their  hands,  and. 
£nii]d_ch.nnse  Lafargue  and  Longuet,  whojwsie 
well  off.  He  often  went  to  the 


theatre,  and  with  one  of  his  daughters  he  at- 
tended at  the  Society  of  Arts  a  soiree  graced 
by  the  presence  of  royalty;  from  time  to  time 
he  took  his  family  to  the  seaside;  he  liked  his 
wife  to  sign  herself  'Jenny,  nee  Baronne  de 
ffiestghalgn";  he  was  well  received  in^ffluent  <3//v 
circles,  and  was  Irequentfyconsulted  by  the  y 
Tlr^es"\j^x)f^^  he  ac- 

cepted the  office  of  constable  of  the  vestry  of 
St.  Pancras,  taking  the  customary  oath,  and 
donning  the  regulation  uniform  on  gala  oc- 
casions. 

Nevertheless,  neither  this  final  settlement 
in  a  foreign  land  nor  the  persecution  he  suf- 
fered from  the  government  of  his  own  coun- 
try could  destroy  or  even  lessen  his  devotion 


8o  KARL  MARX 

to  Germany.  To  the  da/v  of  his  d 
mained  a  faithlul  childof  the  fatherland,  for 
which  he  hoped  the  greatest  of  futures.  He 
sang  the  praises  of  German  music  and  litera- 
ture; he  delighted  in  German  victories  and 
German  expansion;  he  dreaded  a  weakening 
of  German  protectionism  which  might 
strengthen  the  commercial  hegemony  of  Brit- 
ain; and  in  1870  he  refused  to  sign  an  appeal 
in  favour  of  peace  unless  it  were  definitely 
stated  that  Germany  was  waging  a  purely 
defensive  war.  The  French  and  Russian  ex- 
iles in  London  were  indignant,  and  circulated 
whispers  that  Marx  was  a  Prussian  emissary, 
and  had  received  a  bribe  of  £10,000.  An  idle 
tale!  It  is  true  that  among  German  conser- 
vatives and  among  the  beneficiaries  of  Ger- 
many there  could  not  be  found  a  supporter 
more  sincere  and  more  fervent  than  was  this 
proscribed  rebel.  But  he  was  nqj3aladin  on 
behalf  of  Prussian  imperialism,  as  we  can 
learn  beyond  dispute  from  a  letter  he  sent  to 


KARL  MARX  81 

the  "Daily  News"  in  1878  denouncing  Bis- 
marckian  ambitions  and  the  Bismarckian  ex- 
pansionist policy  as  a  growing  peril. 
/  Yet  the  supreme  aim  of  his  activity  and  his 
/  life  enormously  transcended  the  circum- 
/  scribed  range  of  country  and  of  nation,  for  he 
aspired  to  a  loftier  goal,  to  the  organisation  of 
the  mental  and  manual  workers  of  all  coun- 
tries so  that  they  might  constitute  a  united 
(^revolutionary  force.  Within  a  brief  time  of 
his  arrival  in  the  British  metropolis  he  again 
became  the  chief,  nay  the  dictator,  of  a  circle 
to  which  none  could  be  admitted  without  pass- 
ing a  severe  examination  as  to  knowledge  of 
science  in  general  and  of  political  economy  in 
particular,  an  examination  so  rigorous  that 
even  Wilhelm  Liebknecht  was  unable  at  first 
to  satisfy  its  requirements,  an  examination 
that  was  physical  as  well  as  mental,  for  the 
aspirants  were  subjected  (rejoice,  shade 
of  Lombroso!)  to  precise  craniometrical 
tests. 


82  KARL  MARX 

Thus  our  thinker,  crowned  as  if  by  divine 
right  with  a  kind  of  imperial  halo,  exercised 
undisputed  sway  over  the  troop  of  ex- 
iles, Pieper,  Bauer,  Blind,  Biskamp,  Ec- 
carius,  Liebknecht,  Freiligrath,  Cesare  Orsini 
(brother  of  the  (regicide^ ,  and  even  over  the 
revolutionary  agitators  in  Germany.  Soon, 
however,  his  mind  was  invaded  and  dominated 
by  a  yet  more  ambitious  design,  for  he  planned 
the  formation  of  a  society  whirh  sfinii!^  unite 
the  proletarians  of  all  the  wnrldjnto  one  for- 
midable  International,  to  resist  the  aggressions 


of  capital  and  to  work  for  the  destruction  of 
the  capitalist  systerp^It  was  at  first  an  associ- 
ation of  modest  proportions,  consisting  merely 
of  a  few  revolutionaries  assembled  in  London. 
Marx  absolutely  refused  the  chairmanship, 
contenting  himself  with  the  post,  ostensibly 
less  important,  of  delegate  for  the  German 
section. 

From  the  first  formation  of  the  new  feder- 
ation Marx  did  his  utmost  to  counteract  the 


KARL  MARX  83 

influence  of  Mazzini,  for  Mazzini,  through 
the  instrumentality  of  two  of  his  followers, 
Fontana  and  the  elder  Wolff,  wished  to  inspire 
the  International  with  his  idealist  conceptions 
and  to  initiate  it  into  the  secrets  of  conspiracy. 
Marx,  on  the  other  hand,  was  unwearying  in 
his  efforts  to  advocate  his  own  view  that  mate- 
rial interests  preponderate,  and  that  these  in- 
terests must  be  publicly  asserted  and  defended 
in  the  arena  of  history.  Soon  the  federation 
established  branches  in  France^jG^rmany^jhe 
United  States,  and  even  the  Latin  countries; 
and  this  involved  for  Marx,  who  was  really 
the  chief,  a  mass  of  work  in  the  way  of  organi- 
sation, and  of  struggle  against  those  who  held 
conflicting  views.  Everywhere,  in  fact,  he 
had  to  encounter  trends  differing  from  his 
own,  and  differing  no  less  extensively  one  from 
another  owing  to  the  varying  characters  of 
the  countries  concerned. 
In  Germany  he  had  t 


of  LassalleTlTrnan  inclined  to  compromises 


84  KARL  MARX 

and  to  elastic  unions  with  constituted  author- 
ity. In  France  anti-intellectual  tendencies 
were  already  manifest,  so  that  there  was  an 
inclination  to  restrict  the  socialist  outlook  to 
an  aspiration  for  immediately  practical  labour 
legislation  of  minor  importance.  In  Italy  and 
in  Spain,  Marx's  troubles  arose  from  the  an- 
archist tendencies  characteristic  of  those  coun- 
tries, tendencies  fostered  by  the  propaganda 
of  Bakunin. 

As  against  these  divergent  aims,  Marx,  with 
inflexible  tenacity,  maintained  his  own  pro- 
gramme with  the  utmost  rigour,  insisting  that 
it  was  essential  to^ederatethe_proletarjan 
forces  ofthejvvorld  into  aajnvincible  organi- 
sationjyjiich  in  all  possible  ways,  by  strikeSj 
by  parliamentary  and  legal  methods,  but  also 
by  force  shou!3Tiee3  arise,  should  deliver  on- 
slaughts upon  the  bourgeoisie  and  upon  con- 
stituted authority,  should  exact  concessions  of 
increasing  importance,  and  should  ultimately 
secure  a  complete  triumph.  The  proletarians 


KARL  MARX  85 

of  the  two  hemispheres  were  not  slow  to  accept 
the  programme;  and  this  man  who  was  him- 
self suffering  from  actual  hunger,  now  secured 
a  great  position  as  a  thinker,  so  that  the  oper- 
atives of  Paris,  New  York,  and  Diisseldorf  did 
honour  to  his  name. 

These  activities,  however,  did  riot  com- 
pletely interrupt  his  intellectual  labours,  for 
during  the  period  at  which  we  have  now  ar- 
rived hejpublished  in  the  "New  York  Trib- 
une^a_series  of  Trticles  upon  Revolution  and 
Counter-revolution  In  Germany  and  upon 
Political  Struggles  in  France~_In  1852,  in 
"The  Revolution,"^published  in  the  German 
tongue  in  New  York,  there  had  appeared  the 
article  The  Eighteenth  Brumaire  of  Louis 
Bonaparte.  Substantially  these  writings  are 
an  Application  of  the  materialist  conception  of 
history  to' the  more  conspicuous ;_  events  ofjfie 
recent  political  history  of  Germany  and  of 
France.  ""In  Edition,  Marx  published  in  the 
"Tribune"  a  series  of  articles  of  a  more  dis- 


86  KARL  MARX 

tinctively  political  character,  dealing  with 
The  Eastern  Question,  displaying  marvellous 
erudition  and  a  wonderful  power  of  forecast- 
ing events.  • 


CHAPTER  III 

NEVERTHELESS,  the  organisation  of  the  pro- 
jetariak  and  hiTfourn^lisfic  labours,  however 
intense  and  however  weighty,  did  not  repre- 
sent in  the  life  of  Marx  anything  more  than  a 
vexatious  parenthesis  or  a  regrettable  delay 
in  the  fulfilment  of  the  supreme  task  he  had 
set  before  himself  from  the  very  outset  of  his 
life  in  Britain.  Hardly,  in  fact,  had  Marx 
settled  down  in  the  wonderful  town  of  Lon- 
don, to  the  economistsoinexhaustible^field 
J:or  study  and  exp_exience,  than  he  proposed  to 
rebuild  from  the  foundations  the  entire  edifice 
of  his  economic  and  statistical  knowledge, 
which  was  at  that  time  comparatively  small 
when  contrasted  with  the  vast  extent  of  his 
preliminary  readings  in  philosophy.  In  the 
British  Museum  library,  therefore,  he  plunged 

87 


KARL  MARX 

into  the  study  of  the  classical  economists  of  the 
island  realm,  showing  inexhaustible  patience 
in  tracing  the  earliest  and  most  trifling  ramifi- 
cations of  economic  science. 

Beginning  with  the  study  of  the  theory  of 
rent,  he  went  on  to  the  study  of  money,  of  the 
relationship  between  the  quantity  of  metal  in 
circulation  and  the  rate  of  exchange,  of  the 
influence  of  bank  reserves  upon  prices,  and  so 
forth.  He  then  devoted  himself  to  the  theories 
of  value,  profit,  interest,  and  population^  Si- 
multaneously he  studied  without  remission 
statistics,  blue  books,  ministerial  and  parlia- 
mentary concerns. 

From  all  this  gigantic  toil  he  derived  the 
materials  for  the  writing  of  the  work  which 
//was  henceforward  to  be  at  once  the  sorrow 
l\and  the  joy  of  his  life.    His  first  intention  was 
to  limit  himself  to  a  critical  history  of  politi- 
cal economy,  or  a  detailed  analysis  of  the 
theories  which  he  had  so  often  enunciated,  as 
well  as  of  the  lacunae  which  had  become  ap- 


KARL  MARX  89 

parent  in  them.  But  an  unexpected  result 
issued  from  the  mental  contact  with  this  huge 
mass  of  science  and  analysis,  for  he  believed 
that  he  had  made  a  splendid  and  startling  dis- 
covery whereby  the  sacred  theory  of  profit 
could  be  utterly  exploded. 

Now,  therefore,  he  outlined  the  design  of  his 
great  work,  which  was  to  consist  of  two  parts; 
a  first,  historico-critical,  intended  to  elucidate 
the  different  forms  of  the  theory  of  profit  as 
expounded  by  the  various  British  economists; 
and  a  second,  theoretical  and  constructive, 
which  was  to  announce  to  the  world  the  au- 
thor's own  doctrine.  This  method  of  exposi- 
tion is  substantially  identical  with  that  fol- 
lowed by  Bohm-Bawerk  in  his  Capital  and 
Interest,  and  it  corresponds  moreover  to  the 
immediate  requirements  of  the  investigation, 
which  ought  to  begin  with  the  study  of  pre- 
vailing opinions  and  doctrines,  and  then  only 
proceed  to  innovation.  But  a  more  atten- 
tive examination  of  the  question  soon  con- 


90  KARL  MARX 

vinced  Marx  that  this  would  not  be  the  most 
efficacious  method  of  furnishing  a  theoretical 
reproduction  of  actualities,  since,  to  this  end, 
we  must  let  the  phenomena  tell  their  own  tale 
before  we  proceed  to  call  to  account  those  who 
have  already  analysed  them,  and  before  we 
draw  attention  to  the  ways  in  which  their  con- 
ception of  the  facts  diverges  from  that  which 
reality,  when  directly  questioned,  reveals. 
The  method  has  ever  been  preferred  by  the 
most  gifted  theorists,  and  has  been  applied  by 
Bergson  with  admirable  dexterity  in  his  Crea- 
tive Evolution.  Marx,  therefore,  never  weary 
of  destroying  and  refashioning,  inverted  his 
original  design,  and  promptly  began  the  study 
and  analysis  of  concrete  phenomena,  to  pro- 
ceed then  only  to  a  criticism  of  the  theories 
of  his  precursors.  It  was  in  accordance  with 
such  criteria  that  he  wrote  his  Criticism  of 
Political  Economy,  of  which  the  first  instal- 
ment was  published  at  Berlin  in  1859. 

The  most  notable  portion  of  this  work  is 


KARL  MARX  91 

the  preface,  which  contains  the  first  statement 
of  the  theory  of  historical  materialism.  \The 
relationships  of  men  in  social  Hfe.  says  Marx, 
are  determined  by  the  conditions  of  produc- 
tion,  are  necessary  relationships  independent 
of  the  individual  will;  these  dete-rmined  rela- 
tionships constitute  the  real  foundation  upon 
which  is  erected  the  legislative,  political, 
moral,  and  religious  superstructure  of  every 
age.  The  relationships  of  production,  or  the 
economic  relationships  prevailing  at  a  given 
period,  are  a  natural  and  necessary  outcome 
of  the  method  of  production,  or  rather  of  the 
historic  phase  of  the  instrument  of  production. 
But  sooner  or  later  the  further  development 
of  the  productive  forces  generates  a  new  con- 
figuration in  technical  method,  a  configura- 
tion incompatible  with  the  prevailing  relation- 
ships of  production,  those  correlative  to  the 
productive  order  hitherto  dominant.  There 
then  occurs  an  explosion,  a  social  revolution, 
which  disintegrates  economic  relationships, 


92  KARL  MARX 

and,  by  jicQthet,  disintegrates  existing  social 
relationships,  replacing  them  by  better  eco- 
nomic relationships,  adequate  to  the  new  and 
more  highly  evolved  phase  of  the  productive 
instrument. 

In  broad  outline  it  may  be  said  that  eco- 
nomic evolution  has  exhibited  four  progres- 

\  is 

sive  phases;  th£A^iaticeconomy,__the  classical 

economy,'the  feudalist  economy,  and  the  mod- 
ern ^oin^£oi^j)r_^^  The 
evolution  of  the  productive  instrument,  never 
arrested  in  its  secular  march,  will  in  due  course 
renew  the  eternally  recurrent  opposition  be- 
tween the  method  of  production  and  the  rela- 
tionships of  production,  rendering  these  in- 
compatible. jOnce  more  will  come  arMgxplo- 
^sjon,  the  Jast  of  the  great  social  convulsions, 
wherebythe  bourgeois  economic  orderjwill  be 
overthrown  and  wlTf  be  replaced_bY_the  co- 
Ogeratiye  commonwealth.  This  new  develop- 

ff    ment  will  close  the  primary  epoch  of  the 

^history  of  human  society. 


KARL  MARX 


93 


But  the  work  we  are  discussing  is  further 
noteworthy  inasmuch  as  it  reflects  a  special 
phase  of  our  author's  thought,  a  thought  which 
never  ceased  to  exhibit  a  struggle  between  op- 
posing trends  and  was  ever  oppressed  by  their 
contrast.  The_book1  in  fact,  shows  Marx  con- 
jdnually_^Jnvolved  in  ^antiquated  Hegelian 
^nachineiy^or  proceeding  througFrarchairTof 
categories  evolving  one  from  another— capi- 
tal, landed  property,  the^  wage  system^  jhe 
jtate,  foreign  commerce,  the  world._jnarket. 
From  each  of  these  categories  we  may  infer 
how  the  process  of  their  successive  develop- 
ment is  accomplished.  We  are  led  .to  infer 
that  the  wage  system  is  the  outcome  of  landed 
proprietorship,  for  the  expropriation  of  the 
peasant  proprietors  produces  the  proletarian- 
ised  masses  offering  labour  power  for  sale; 
and  we  are  led  to  infer  that  the  constitution  of 
the  world  market  is  the  crown  and  the  epilogue 
of  modern  capitalist  economy.  In  fact,  ac- 
cording to  Marx,  the  historic  mission  of  capi- 


94  KARL  MARX 

talism  based  upon  wage  labour,  whose  origins 
go  back  to  the  sixteenth  century,  is  the  creation 
of  the  world  market.  The  ^orld  market  is 
now  devoted  to  the  colonisation  of  California 
and  Australia  and  to  the  opening  of  trading 
ports  in  China  and  Japan;  its  creation 
marks  the  climax  of  capitalism's  historic  mis- 
jsion,  and  indicates  the  approaching  end  of 
(the  economic  form  which  was  destined  to 
/fulfill  it. 

Now  these  ideas,  in 


fantgsti^  show  how  Marx's  thought  at  that 
epoch  was  still  in  an  undecided  or  amphibious 
pnase,  in  which  the  torrid  sun  of  British  eco- 
nomic science  had  not  as  yet  succeeded  in 
vx  totally  dispelling  the  fogs  of  German  philos- 
'yTAophy.      But   anothet^Jr^compatibilitg_  lessens 
f/(/  the  value^of_ihc_bopk  or  diminishes  its  doc- 
\/  trinal  efficacy;  for  Marx,  at  this  stage  of  his 
studies,  invariably  gave  to  the  history  of  doc- 
trine too  preponderant  a  place,  introducing  it 
insistently  into  the  course  of  his  own  exposi- 


KARL  MARX  95 

tion,  which  was  thus  deprived  of  continuity 
and  weakened  in  force. 

Further,  the  ttook  we  are  considering  did 
not  directly  bear  upon  any  of  the  social  ques- 
tions which  strongly  arouse  public  interest, 
but  was  restricted  to  the  study  of  two  theories 
whose  importance  at  first  sight  seems  purely 
academic,  the  theory  of  value  and  the  theory 
of  money. 

Marx  contended  that  the  vajnp 


ties  is  exclusively  determined  by  the  quantity 
of  labour  incorporated  into  them;  he  traced 
the  affiliations  of  this  thesis  with  the  work  of 
its  first  enunciators  in  Italy  and  in  England; 
but  he  did  not  offer  any  reasoned  demonstra- 
tion of  its  truth.  On  the  contrary,  he  frankly 
recognised  that  this  contention  is  full  of  con- 
tradictions alike  theoretical  and  practical,  con- 
tradictions that  appear  insoluble;  but  he 
promised  to  vanquish  them  in  the  subsequent 
course  of  his  exposition. 

Far  more   noteworthy   is    the   chapter   on 


96  KARL  MARX 

money,  for  it  contains  a  masterly  criticism  of 
the  quantitative  theory  of  Ricardo,  and  an  ef- 
fective refutation  of  the  "labour  notes"  idea  of 
Bray,  Gray,  Proudhon,  and  others.  Accord- 
ing to  this  plan,  every  producer  performing  a 
certain  quantum  of  labour  would  receive  from 
the  state  a  voucher  entitling  him  to  obtain  from 
other  producers  the  result  of  an  equal  quantum 
of  labour;  but  the  suggestion  implies  complete 
ignorance  of  the  intrinsic  conditions  of  the  in- 
dividualistic economy,  wherein  each  producer 
creates  an  object  without  any  certainty  that 
there  will  be  a  market  for  it,  or  that  it  repre- 
sents a  real  utility  and  will  fetch  a  definite 
price.  It  obviously  follows  that  the  producer 
cannot  be  sure  that  he  will  be  able  to  sell  the 
article  which  he  has  produced,  or  that  he  will 
be  able  to  transform  it  into  anything  with  uni- 
versal purchasing  power;  the  product  has  to 
be  baptised  or  sanctioned  by  the  market,  which 
alone  has  power  to  stamp  it  as  useful  by  pur- 
chasing it. 


KARL  MARX 

Now  the  "labour  note"  system  claims  that  it 
can  forcibly  dispense  with  the  market  by  sup- 
plying to  the  producer  of  an  article  whose 
utility  and  saleable  value  has  not  been  recog- 
nised by  the  market,  a  universally  available 
purchasing  power.  The  practical  outcome  of 
this  forcible  method  is  that  the  producer  of  a 
useless  article  can  by  means  of  his  "labour 
note"  secure  for  himself  a  useful  article, 
whereas  the  producer  of  this  latter  will  not  in 
turn  be  able  to  exchange  his  own  "labour  note" 
for  any  object  possessing  utility;  that  is  to  say, 
the  article  made  by  the  first  producer  will  find 
no  purchaser,  and  the  "labour  note"  of  the 
second  producer  will  effect  no  purchase.  This 
is  inevitable,  for  the  proposed  reform  is  incon- 
sistent, eclectic,  and  incomplete,  since  it  pre- 
tends to  socialise  exchange  while  maintaining 
production  and  distribution  upon  their  old  in- 
dividualistic basis,  and  overlooks  the  incon- 
gruity of  any  such  supposition. 

The  "labour  note"  system  cannot  rationally 


98  KARL  MARX 

be  instituted  until  production  has  been  social-; 
ised,  or  until  the  state  shall  impose  upon  eachS 
individual  the  production  of  a  specified) 
quantity  and  quality  of  commodities,  corre- 
latively  imposing  upon  the  consumer  the  obli- 
gation to  acquire  these.  In  such  conditions, 
however,  we  could  no  longer  speak  of  com- 
modities or  of  exchange,  for  these  phenomena 
belong  exclusively  to  an  individualistic  econ- 
omy and  would  have  no  place  in  a  socialised 
economy.  This  means  that  the  reform  of 
exchange  by  the  suppression  of  profit  can  only 
be  effected  by  the  suppression  of  exchange 
itself,  by  the  institution  of  the  co-operative 

\commonwealth.  IndeedT  Robert  Owen,  who 
proposed  the  "labour  note"  system  in  1832, 
andwas  the  most  brilliant  of  its  _advocates7" 
clearly  recognised  this  difficulty,  and  under- 
stood that  the^^alisation_of_  production 
would  b^^jmjndisijer^ 

^  adoption  of  the  glan.    It  was  the  impatience 
i disciples  which  forced  him  to  inaugu- 


KARL  MARX  99 

rate  the  system  within  the  framework  of  the 
capitalist  economy  by  founding  the  National 
Equitable  Labour  Exchange.  ,The  logic  of 
patent-  demonstration  of  the  irra- 


tionality of  thejitjffmpt-  and  Owen,  saddened 
and  humiliated,  was  compelled  to  witness  the 
failure  of  the  new  institution. 

It  will  readily  be  understood  that  these 
abstruse  and  abstract  investigations,  devoid  as 
they  are  of  any  tangible  connection  with  the 
burning  problems  of  property,  were  not  likely 
to  arouse  interest  among  the  members  of  the 
party.  Nothing  could  be  more  natural  than 
the  tone  of  hopeless  discouragement  with 
which  the  volume  was  greeted  even  by  the 
author's  most  devoted  friends.  Liebknecht, 
for  example,  declared  that  he  had  never  be- 
fore experienced  so  great  a  disappointment. 
Biskamp  enquired  what  on  earth  it  was  all 
about;  Burgers  deplored  that  Marx  should 
have  published  a  work  so  dull  and  frag- 
mentary. It  is  true  that  the  book  had  a  mod- 


ioo  KARL  MARX 

erate  sale;  Rau  quoted  it  in  his  treatise;  cer- 
tain Russian  and  American  economists  made 
it  the  subject  of  profound  studies.  Never- 
theless, the  publisher  refused  to  proceed  with 
the  issue. 

Hardly  had  this  literary  bickering  come  to 
an  end  when  Marx  became  involved  in  a  vio- 
lent quarrel  with  the  distinguished  naturalist 
Karl  Vogt,  who  publicly  charged  him  with 
setting  snares  for  the  German  exiles  and  with 
having  sordid  relationships  with  the  police. 
Marx  replied  with  a  savage  booklet  entitled 
Herr  Vogt  (London,  1860).  The  style  of 
this  polemic  writing  is  intolerably  vulgar;  but 
in  other  respects  the  book  is  noteworthy,  for 
it  contains  interesting  revelations  anent  the 
Italian  campaign  and  the  relationships  be- 
tween Turin  and  the  Tuileries.  We  must  re- 
member, moreover,  that  the  accusation  here 
launched  against  Vogt,  that  he  was  in  the  pay 
of  the  Second  Empire,  was  subsequently  con- 
firmed beyond  dispute,  for  in  1871  among  the 


KARL  MARX  101 

ruins  of  the  Tuileries  there  was  found  a  re- 
ceipt for  f rs.  40,000  which  had  been  paid  over 
to  Vogt. 

But  scientific  failures,  personal  contests, 
persistent  and  distressing  domestic  discom- 
forts, seemed  to  inspire  our  athlete  with  re- 
newed strength  for  the  continuance  of  the  work 
he  had  begun.  Nevertheless,  profiting  by  ex- 
perience, he  decided  upon  a  yet  further  modi- 
fication in  the  plan  of  his  book,  resolving  to 
defer  to  its  final  section  all  historico-critical 
disquisitions,  and  to  concentrate  his  energies 
upon  the  positive  analysis  of  concrete  reality. 
Further,  being  prevented  by  frequent  illness 
from  tackling  the  more  difficult  themes  of  pure 
economics,  he  devoted  these  long  intervals  of 
comparative  leisure  to  statistical  investigations 
and  to  the  perusal  of  factory  inspectors'  re- 
ports, of  white  books  and  of  blue  books,  and 
he  plunged  into  the  study  of  the  economic  his- 
tory of  Great  Britain,  so  that  it  became  pos- 
sible for  him  to  interleave  the  pages  of 


1 02  KARL  MARX 

abstract  theory,  necessarily  difficult  to  under- 
stand, with  pages  that  are  really  living,  pages 
that  vibrate  with  the  reflex  of  reality.  At 
length,  abandoning  the  method  he  had  previ- 
ously followed  of  publishing  fragmentary 
essays,  he  decided  to  rewrite  the  work  through- 
out before  sending  it  to  press. 

After  several  years  of  incredible  labour,  the 
days  being  devoted  to  reading  in  the  British 
Museum  library,  and  the  nights  (for  he  often 
went  on  writing  until  four  in  the  morning)  to 
literary  composition;  falling  again  and  again 
beneath  the  burden  of  his  cross,  but  ever  ris- 
ing to  his  feet  once  more,  thanks  to  the  demon 
within  urging  him  on  and  thanks  also  to  the 
sustaining  hand  of  his  incomparable  friend; 
he  at  length  completed  his  task,  and  in  the 
soring  of  1867  sailed  for  Hamhijrg  with  tbjL 
manuscript  of  the  first  volume  of  Capital. 
which  he  entrusted  to  Meissner  for  publica- 
tion. In  Hamburg  he  passed  pleasant  days 
with  Dr.  Kugelmann,  a  friend  and  fervent 


KARL  MARX  103 

adrfrirer,  and  with  various  officials,  generals, 
and  bankers;  he  was  visited  by  a  lawyer  named 
Warnebold,  an  emissary  from  Bismarck,  who, 
acting  on  the  minister's  instructions,  exhorted 

'him  "to_jjny3lo£  his  brilliant  talents  for  trie 
actvantage  of  the  German  people."  Before 
long,  however,  he  returned  to  London,  where 
he  earnestly  devoted  himself  to  giving  the  last 
touches  to  his  book,  which  was  finally  issued 
from  the  press  in  the  autumn  of  the  same  year. 
Thus  was  at  length  given  to  the  world  the 
monumental  work  destined  to  revolutionise 
sociological  thought,  and  to  give  a  new  and 
higher  trend,  not  to  socialism  alone,  but  to 
political  economy  itself.  To  sum  up  its  drift 
very  briefly,  we  may  say  that  the  argument 
I  follows  three  chief  lines,  value^  machinery,  and 
I  pr\m\trv^cc^r^u}^tlnn.  He  set  out  from  the 
fundamental  principle  (a  principle  which  the 
philosopher  Krause  had  declared  to  be  as  im- 
portant to  political  economy  as  the  fall  of 
heavy  bodies  is  important  to  physics)  that  the 


104  KARL  MARX 

value  of  products  is  measured  by  the  mass  of 

intaJJigm,  and  drew  the 


conclusion  that  the  profit  nf  capital  is  nothing 
other  than  the  materialisation  "f  -a 


of  labour  expended  by  the  worke  r^  ancl_is_in_ 
other  words  unpaid  labour,  stolen  anousurped 
income.  JThe  worker,  that  is  to  say,  transmits 
into  the  product  a  value  equal  to  the  quantity 
of  labour  incorporated  therein,  but  receives 
from  the  capitalist  a  value  less  than  this,  a 
value  equal  to  the  quantity  of  labour  embodied 
in  the  commodities  necessary  to  reproduce  the 
energy  expended  by  the  worker. 

Now  the  difference  between  the  value  of  the 
product  (that  is  to  say  the  quantity  of  labour 
transmitted  by  the  worker  into  the  product) 
and  the  value  of  the  laboui\gower  (that  is  to 
say  the  quantity  of  labour  employed  in  pro- 
ducing the  commodities  consumed  by  the 
worker)  constitute  the  surplus  value  which  is 
gratuitously  pocketed  by  the  owner  of  the 
means  of  production  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that 


KARL  MARX  105 

he  is  owners/In  this  way  Marx  attains  to  the 
qualitative  notion  of  the  income  of  capital,  or 
explains  whereof  that  income  effectively  con- 
sists. It  remains  to  determine  the  quantity  of 
income,  which  cannot  be  specified  unless  there 
have  previously  been  precisely  determined  the 
measure  and  the  figure  of  wages. 

Now  though  it  be  true  that  the  growth  of 
accumulation  virtually  tends  to  bring  about 
an  increase  in  the  amount  paid  in  wages,  it  is 
nevertheless  within  the  power  of  the  capitalist 
to  obviate  this  undesirable  event  by  investing 
the  growing  accumulation  in  the  form  of  tech- 
nical capital,  which  by  its  very  nature  is  with- 
out influence  upon  wages.  But  the  capitalist 
can  do  more  than  this.  He  can  transform  into 
technical  capital  a  part  of  the  capital  which 
has  hitherto  been  utilised  in  paying  wages, 
thus  throwing  some  of  the  workers  out  of  em- 
ployment, or  creating  an  industrial  reserve 
army.  This  reserve  army,  on  the  one  hand 
stifles  all  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  workers 


106  KARL  MARX 

in  active  employment,  keeping  their  wages  at 
a  level  which  will  purchase  the  barest  neces- 
saries, and  on  the  other  hand  permits  to  capi- 
talist industry  the  sudden  expansions  in  times 
of  prosperity  which  to  the  capitalist  are  so 
desirable  and  so  profitable. 

Thus  Marx's  qualitative  investigation  is  suc- 
ceeded by  a  quantitative  investigation,  so  that 
we  learn,  not  only  whatjurplus  value  is,  but 
/that  it  is  equal  to  all  the  excess  over  and  above 
(  the  more  or  less  limited  subsistence  of  the 
\yvorker,  and  that  the  worker  is  not  merely  de- 
frauded of  part  of  the  value  resulting  from  his 
labour,  but  is  reduced  to  a  wretched  pittance, 
happy  if  he  can  secure  this,  and  if  he  be  not 
condemned  by  the  hopeless  entanglements  of 
capitalist  relationships  to  submergence  in  the 
backwater  of  the  most  terrible  poverty.  The 
result  is  that  to  the  favoured  recipients  of  sur- 
plus value  there  is  subject  a  brutalised  crowd 
reduced  to  a  narrow  wage,  while  at  a  yet  lower 
level  there  struggles  in  the  morass  the  amor- 


KARL  MARX  107 

phous  mass  of  those  who  are  condemned  to 
labour  witKout^enS/ 

We  thus  realise,  adds  Marx,  how  jsrofit^is 
born  of  capital  and  is  in  its  turn  transformed 
into  capital^  But  none  of  the  considerations 
hitherto  adduced  suffice  to  make  it  clear  what 
was  the  origin  of  primitive  capital,  that  which 
first  of  all  gave  birth  to  profit,  and  conse- 
quently cannot  be  the  product  of  profit.  The 
celebrated  section  on  the  secret  of  primitive 
accumulation  was  intended  to  solve  this  prob- 
lem. Classical  political  economy,  said  Marx, 
regarded  the  formation  of  primitive  capital  as 
an  episode  which  occurred  during  the  first 
days  of  creation.  In  times  long  gone  by,  there 
were  two  sorts  of  people;  one,  the  diligent,  in- 
telligent, and  above  all  frugal  elite;  the  other, 
lazy  rascals,  spending  their  substance,  and 
more,  in  riotous  living.  Thus  it  came  to  pass 
before  long  that  tjie  f&im&r  became  impover- 
ished whilst  theTfetteTgrew  wealthy,  and  the 
wealthy  earned  the  gratitude  of  the  poor  by 


io8  KARL  MARX 

hiring  these  to  work  for  them  in  return  for  a 
paltry  wage.    The  theological  legend  of  origi- 
nal sin  tells  us  how  man  came  to  be  condemned 
/^> 

to  eat  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow;  but 
the  economic  history  of  original  sin  reveals  to 
us  that  there  are  people  to  whom  this  is  by  no 
means  essential.    We  learn  that  one  section  of 
humanity  has  succeeded  in  eluding  the  divine 
judgment  and  in  procuring  for  itself  bread  and 
cakes  by  the  sweat  of  others) 
j     Unfortunately,  continues  Marx,  a  conscien- 
;tious  questioning  of  history  discloses  that  prim- 
1  itive  capital  originated  in  very  various  ways, 
W  a  character  anything  but  idyllic.    Until  the 
close  of  the  fifteenth  century  there  existed 
in  England  a  race  of  peasant  proprietors,  nom- 
inally subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  great 
lords  of  the  soil.    But  the  increasing  demand 
for  wool  which  resulted  from  the  expansion 
of  the  Flemish  wool  industry,  and  the  increas- 
ing demand  for  flesh  meat  consequent  upon  the 
growth  of  population,  induced  the  great  land- 


KARL  MARX  109 

owners  to  destroy  an  agrarian  system  by  which 
their  returns  from  rent  were  rendered  practi- 
cally nil.  The  free  cultivators  were  brutally 
evicted  from  the  fields  which  their  ancestors 
had  arduously  tilled  for  centuries  past,  to  be 
replaced  by  shepherds  and  flocks,  the  crowds 
of  the  expropriated  hastening  to  the  towns  to 
offer  the  strength  of  their  arms  for  hire. 

Here  they  happened  upon  a  rout  of  usurers, 
traders,  house-owners,  enriched  craftsmen,  and 
lucky  speculators;  and  here  too  were  those 
who  had  expropriated  them,  the  landowners 
who  had  heaped  up  savings  by  fair  means  or 
foul,  but  had  hitherto  been  unable  to  turn  their 
savings  to  account  owing  to  the  restrictions  im- 
posed by  the  corporative  economy  (guild  sys- 
tem). These  accepted  as  a  gift  from  heaven 
the  influx  of  the  proletarian  multitude,  and 
were  not  slow  in  setting  the  newcomers  to 
work  on  behalf  of  the  growing  manufactures. 
Modern  capitalist  industry  thus  originated  in 
a  terrible  expropriation  of  the  working  popu- 


i  io  KARL  MARX 

lation  which  transformed  the  independent 
peasants  into  an  impoverished  and  hunger- 
stricken  mob.  But  historic  nemesis  awaits  this 
society  conceived  in  theft,  and  Marx  predicts 
its  disastrous  end  in  the  ominous  words  :j  The 
knell  of  capitalist  property  will  sound;  the_ 

expropriators  will  be  ~:~*^  " 

^— 

by  the  forces  inherent  in  the  mechanism  of  the 
capitalist  economy.  The  more  extensive  the 
development  of  that  economy,  the  fiercer  be- 
comes the  internecine  struggle  between  the  in- 
dividual aggregations  of  capital,  the  more  ex- 
tensive become  the  accumulations  of  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  capitalists  of  the  upper  stratum, 
and  the  smaller  becomes  the  number  of  these; 
correlatively  there  takes  place  an  increase  in 
the  size  of  the  working  and  poverty-stricken 
crowd,  the  more  hopeless  and  more  pitiful  be- 
comes its  degradation,  whilst  simultaneously 
its  cohesion  grows  more  compact,  for  the  work- 
ers are  disciplined  and  organised  by  the  very 


KARL  MARX  in 

process  which  associates  labour  in  the  factory 
and  upon  the  land.  At  a  given  moment,  when 
the  number  of  mammoth  capitalists  has  con- 
spicuously diminished,  and  when  the  pullulat- 
ing mass  of  proletarians  has  increased  to  an 
immeasurable  degree  and  has  been  forced 
down  into  the  most  abject  poverty,  it  will  at 
length  be  easy  ^of  the  dispossessed  to  expro- 
priate the  small  group  of  usurpers. 

Thus  the  expropriation  of  the  masses  by  the 
few,  which  greeted  the  dawn  of  the  contem- 
porary economic  order,  will  be  counterposed 
by  the  expropriation  of  the  restricted  number 
of  masters  at  the  hands  of  the  proletarian 
masses,  ancLthis  will  triumphantly  herald  a 
calmer  and  more  resplendent  sunrise./ 


CHAPTER  IV 

A  BROAD  outline  has  now  been  given  of  the 
marvellous  work  which,  whatever  judgment 
we  may  feel  it  necessary  to  pass  upon  the  value 
of  the  doctrines  it  enunciates,  will  remain  for 
all  time  one  of  the  loftiest  summits  ever 
climbed  by  human  thought,  one  of  the  imper- 
ishable monuments  of  the  creative  powers  of 
the  human  mind.  Above  all  we  are  impressed 
and  charmed  by  the  magnificent  quality  of  the 
exposition,  in  which  but  one  defect  can  be 
pointed  out,  and  this  was  probably  imposed  by 
the  abnormal  conditions  under  which  the 
author  wrote. 

We  allude  to  the  last  chapter,  the  one  that 
crowns  the  story  of  the  historic  expropriation 
of  the  workers  with  the  eloquent  example  of 

112 


KARL  MARX  113 

the  colonies.  Logically  this  chapter  should 
precede  the  penultimate  chapter,  wherein 
Marx,  from  his  account  of  these  terrible  hap- 
penings, casts  the  horoscope  of  revolution.  It 
is  probable  that  the  inversion  was  deliberate, 
for  the  prophetic  call  to  the  proletarian  revo- 
lution would  have  been  more  likely  to  attract 
the  attention  of  the  censorship  had  it  been 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

Apart  from  this  trifling  matter,  we  cannot 
but  admire  the  shapely  pyramidal  construc- 
tion, the  harmonious  and  flowing  movement  of 
the  book,  which,  passing  from  the  most  subtle 
disquisitions  upon  the  algebra  of  value,  deals 
with  the  complexities  of  factory  life  and 
machine  production,  plunges  into  the  inferno 
of  workshops  and  mines  and  into  the  infamous 
stews  of  unspeakable  poverty,  to  conclude  with 
a  description  of  the  tragic  expropriation  of  a 
suffering  population.  The  work  is  a  master- 
piece wherein  all  is  great,  all  alike  incom- 
parable and  wonderful — the  acuteness  of  the 


ii4  KARL  MARX 

analysis,  the  statuesque  majesty  of  the  whole, 
the  style  vibrant  with  sorrow  or  with  indigna- 
tion according  as  the  author  is  sympathising 
with  the  woes  of  the  poor  or  scourging  the 
villainies  of  the  mighty,  the  vast  learning,  and 
the  torrential  impetus  of  passion.  There  is  a 
stupendous  harmony  of  irreconcilables,  so  that, 
as  in  the  mysterious  creations  of  nature,  we 
find  an  almost  inconceivable  association  of  real 
symmetry  with  apparent  disorder;  an  associa- 
tion of  minute  attention  to  detail  with  monu- 
mental synthesis,  an  association  of  mathemat- 
ics with  history,  an  association  of  repose  with 
movement;  so  that  in  all  its  fibres  the  book 
seems  to  be  the  offspring  of  an  unfathomable 
and  transcendental  union  between  superhuman 
labour  and  superhuman  pain. 

Nothing,  therefore,  is  more  natural  or  more 
readily  explicable  than  the  phenomenal  suc- 
cess of  Capital,  a  successwhich  has  rarely  been 
paralleled  in  the  history  oMntellcctual  jgro- 
ductions.  Translated  into  almost  every  Ian- 


KARL  MARX  115 

uage  (recently  eveninto_Cb.inf..se) ;  eagerly 
read  by  men  of  learningno  less  than  by  states- 
men, by  reactionaries  as  welJLaS-by  rebels; 
quoted  in  parliaments  and  in  meetings  of  the 
plebs,  from  the  pulpit  and  from  the  platform, 
in  huts  and  in  palaces — it  speedily  secured  a 
world-wide  reputation  for  its  author,  making 
him  the  idol  of  the  most  irreconcilable  classes 
and  of  the  most  contrasted  stocks.  Whereas, 
in  'fact,  the  prophetic  announcement  of  the 
glorious  advent  of  collective  property  led  to 
the  assembling  round  Marx  of  all  the  common 
people  of  the  west,  who  hailed  him  as  avenger, 
as  leader,  and  as  seer  of  the  onward  march  of 
the  proletariat;  in  such  countries  as  Russia, 
where  capitalist  development  was  as  yet  in  its 
infancy,  the  bourgeois  classes  sang  the  praises 
of  the  book  which  announced  the  historic  mis- 
sion of  capitalism,  and  thus  it  was  that  the  idol 
of  the  western  petroleurs  became  in  the  far 
east  of  Europe  the  fetich  of  bankers  and  man- 
ufacturers. 


n6  KARL  MARX 

After  the  first  shock  of  surprise,  however, 
readers  turned  to  the  dispassionate  analysis  of 
the  individual  doctrines  advocated  in  the  work, 
and  were  not  slow  to  bring  to  light  certain 
gaps  and  sophisms.  To  say  truth,  no  sovereign 
importance  can  be  attributed  to  any  of  these 
criticisms,  nor  is  it  necessary  to  make  much  of 
the  numerous  attacks  upon  the  statistical  dem- 
onstrations of  Capital. 

f  It  is  undeniable  that  Marx's  thesis  of  the 
/progressive  concentration  of  wealth  into  the 
'hands  of  an  ever-diminishing  number  of  own- 
ers, and  of  the  correlatively  progressive  im- 
poverishment of  the  common  people,  has  not 
been  confirmed.  It  has  indeed  been  confuted 
by  the  most  authoritative  statistics  collected 
since  the  publication  of  the  book,  for  these 
show  that  the  greater  recipients  of  income  in- 
crease more  than  proportionally  to  the  medium 
and  lesser  recipients,  whereas  the  number  of 
taxpayers  in  the  lowest  grades  diminishes, 
with  a  proportionate  increase  in  the  number 


KARL  MARX  117 

of  those  at  a  slightly  higher  level.  Further, 
as  far  as  this  last  fact  is  concerned,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  wages  have  increased  of  late, 
so  that  they  not  merely  rise  above  the  mis- 
erable level  of  bare  subsistence  specified 
by  Lassalle,  but  also  rise  above  the  level 
(which  is  still  miserable,  though  a  trifle 
higher)  expressed  in  the  calculations  of 
Marx. 

It  is,  however,  needful  to  add  that  the 
Marxist  thesis  merely  points  to  a  general  tend- 
ency, and  does  noj:  imply  a  denial  that  more 
or  less  considerable  fluctuations  may  occur  at 
particular  periods.  Moreover,  the  concen- 
tration of  wealth  does  not  find  expression 
solely  in  the  diminution  of  the  numerical  pro- 
portion between  the  greater  and  the  lesser  re- 
cipients of  income,  but  in  addition  in  a  diminu- 
tion of  the  ratio  between  the  taxpayers  and  the 
population  and  in  an  increase  in  the  contrast 
between  the  wealth  of  the  recipients  of  income 
in  various  grades.  Further,  the  most  authori- 


n8  KARL  MARX 

tative  statistics  demonstrate  a  growing  diminu- 
tion in  the  ratio  between  the  owners  and  the 
general  population.  Again,  no  one  can  deny 
that  the  contrast  between  high  grade  and  low 
grade  incomes  has  of  late  exhibited  an  enor- 
mous increase;  that  banking  concentration  and 
the  sway  of  the  banks  over  industry  (a  source 
of  increasing  disparity  in  fortunes)  has  at- 
tained in  recent  years  an  intensity  which  even 
Marx  could  not  have  foreseen;  and  that,  sub- 
sequently to  the  publication  of  Capital  and  to 
the  death  of  its  author,  the  social  fauna  has 
been  enriched  by  an  economic  animal  of  a 
species  previously  unknown,  the  multimillion- 
aire, whose  existence  undeniably  reveals  an 
unprecedented  advance  in  capitalist  concen- 
tration. 

Nay  more,  after  Marx's  death,  agrarian  and 
industrial  concentration  attained  preposterous 
proportions,  such  as  he  had  never  ventured  to 
predict.  In  the  American  Union,  a  single 
landed  estate  will  embrace  territories  equal  to 


KARL  MAR2&-'  119 

entire  provinces,  whilekmustrial  capital  be- 
comes amassed  by^TUiar?s^in  the  hands  of  a 
few  despotic  trusts,  so  thatjwo^thirds  of  the 
entire  working  population  are 


one-twentieth  of  all  the  separate  pnfprprispg  in 
the  country.  These  statements  concern  the 
apex  of  thesocial  pyramid;  but  even  at  the 
base  of  that  structure  the  phenomena  are  far_ 
from  invalidating  the  Marxist  conception  to 
the  extent  which  many  contend.  Correlatively 
with  the  undeniable  rise  in  wages  (which, 
moreover,  has  been  arrested  of  late,  and  has 
been  replaced  by  a  definite  movement  of  retro- 
gression), there  has  occurred  an  enormously 
greater  increase  in  income,  and  therefore  a 
deterioration  in  the  relative  condition  of  the 
workers.  There  has  further  been  manifest  an 
increasing  instability  of  employment,  so  that 
unemployment  has  become  more  widespread 
and  more  frequent,  exposing  the  working 
classes  to  impoverishment  and  incurable  deg- 
radation. 


120  KARL  MARX 

Marx's  other  theses,  however,  are  open  to 

Retracing  thethread 


of  his  demonstrations  with  special  attention  to 
his  study  of  primitive  accumulation,  no  one 
can  deny  the  absolute  authenticity  of  the  facts 
he  narrated.  Nnr  ran  Marx  be  blamed-for 
<^  ^  having  r^tn'rt"pd  his  historic  demonstration  to 
J^  ^  Englandjjhough  in  actual  fact  the  expropria- 
tion of  the  cultivators  has  been  carried  out 
everywhere,  openly  or  tacitly,  and  everywhere 
this  expropriation  has  been  an  initial  stage  in 
the  foundation  of  capitalist  property.  Even 
Russia,  who  flattered  herself  upon  her  inde- 
pendence of  the  universal  law  and  upon  es- 
caping the  fated  expropriation  of  her  peas- 
ants, Russia,  whom  Marx  himself,  as  if  in  a 
sudden  fit  of  mental  aberration,  was  on  the 
point  of  excluding  from  the  sphere  of  his  gen- 
eralisations, has  to  submit  to  the  invariable 
fl?  rule,  and  to  witness  the  transformation  of  her 
independent  peasant  proprietors  into  prole- 
tarians. 


KARL  MARX  121 

The  constitutional  defect  of  this  portion  of 
Marx's  book  is  of  a  very  different  character. 
Although  he  tells  the  story  of  the  expropria- 
tion of  the  cultivators,  he  fails  to  explain  why 
such  expropriation  must  always  take  place,  he 
fails  to  bring  this  great  historical  event  be- 
neath the  sway  of  a  universal  economic  theory. 
Now,  putting  aside  the  incongruity  that  a  book 
essentially  founded  upon  logical  demonstra- 
tion should  all  at  once  break  off  that  demon- 
stration to  turn  to  a  historical  disquisition  and 
a  simple  record  of  facts,  no  one  has  any  right 
to  construct  a  theoretical  generalisation  upon 
the  bare  narration  of  hard  facts  without  re- 
ferring these  to  the  general  psychological  and 
logical  causes  which  have  produced  them.  It 
cannot  be  denied  that  in  this  respect  Marx's 
demonstration  presents  a  defect  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  make  good. 

Yet  more  serious  criticism  may  be  directed 
jagainst  the  theory  of  the  industrial  rese rve 
army,  the  theory  wherein  Marx  attempts  to 


122  KARL  MARX 

sum  up  the  law  of  population  of  the  capitalist 
era.  For  the  theory  is  wholly  based  upon  the 
premise  that  the  conversion  of  wage  capital 
into  technical  capital  is  competent  to  bring 
about  the  permanent  unemployment  of  labour, 
or  definitively  to  reduce  the  demand  for  la- 
bour. Now  this  premise  will  not  hold,  for 
technical  capital,  by  promptly  increasing  the 
profit  of  capital,  and  by  lowering  the  price  of 
the  product  in  the  long  run,  provides  for  the 
capitalist,  first  of  all,  and  subsequently  for  the 

Consumer,  the  possibility  nf  -frpsh  spvincr^  and 

these  in  the  end  create  a  further  demand  for 
labour,  so  that  sooner  or  later  there  will  be  a 
call  upon  the  active  services  of  the  workers 
who  are  temporarily  unemployed.  Vain, 
therefore,  is  any  attempt  to  make  technical 
capital  responsible  for  the  relative  excess  of 
population,  which  technical  capital  cannot 
possibly  produce,  for  this  phenomenon  must 
be  referred  to  the  presence  and  to  the  activity 
of  a  very  different  variety  of  capital,  and  one 


KARL  MARX  123 

not  considered  by  Marx,  namely  unproductive 
capital. 

But  these  criticismsT  which  after  all  touch 
no  more  than  points  of  detail,  arejnere  trifles 
irucomparison  with  the  incurable  contradic- 
the  author's  fundamental  theory 


iijnvolved.  In  fact,  by  a  vigorous  deduction 
from  his  premise  that  the  value  of  commodi- 
tjj^sj^jp^asured  by  the  mass  of  labour  incor- 
porated in  them^Marx  arrives  at  the  funda: 
mental  analogical  distinction  between  con- 
stant capital  and  variable  capital.  If,  how- 
ever, the  value  of  products  be  exclusively  de- 
termined by  the  mass  of  labour  incorporated  ». 
in  them,  it  is  evident  that  the  capital  invested 
in  machinery  or  in  raw  material  can  only 
transmit  to  the  product  a  value  exactly  equal 
to  the  quantity  of  labour  contained  therein, 
without  adding  any  surplus,  and  that  it  is 
therefore  constant  capital;  whereas  wage  capi- 
tal transmits  to  the  product  value  equal  to  all 
the  quantity  of  labour  which  it  maintains  and 


124  KARL  MARX 

sets  in  motion,  a  quantity  which,  as  we  know, 
exceeds  the  quantity  of  labour  contained  in  the 
capital  itself.  In  other  words,  ^age  capital, 
Besides  regrojdiicingjts  own  valueTlumislifiS  a 
supplement  or  a  surplus  value,  and  jsjhercfore 
^variable  capital.  Consequently  surplus  value 
arises  exclusively  from  variable  capital,  and 
is  therefore  precisely  proportional  to  the  quan- 
tity of  this  capital. 

It  further  ensues  that  of  two  undertakings 
employing  equal  amounts  of  aggregate  capital, 
the  one  which  employs  a  larger  proportion  of 
constant  capital  ought  to  furnish  a  profit  and 
a  rate  of  profit  lower  than  that  furnished  by 
the  other.  But  free  competition  among  the 
capitalists  enforces  an  equal  rate  of  profit  upon 
the  capitals  invested  in  the  various  undertak- 
ings, and  leads  to  the  immediate  abandonment 
of  undertakings  requiring  a  greater  proportion 
of  constant  capital,  and  to  the  correlative  ex- 
pansion of  the  others.  There  consequently 
results  an  increase  in  the  value  of  the  products 


KARL  MARX  125 

of  the  former  undertakings,  and  a  diminution 
in  the  value  of  the  products  of  the  latter.  This 
process  continues  until  the  value  of  the  respec- 
tive products  furnishes  an  equal  rate  of  profit 
to  the  capitals  respectively  employed  in  pro- 
ducing them,  ^alue^therefore,  though  in  the 
first  instance  it  is  equivalent  to  the  labour  em- 
ployed introducing  the  products,  necessarily 
diverges  from  that  standard  in  the  end,  and 
has  then  an  utterly  different  measure."  Thus 
the  theory  we  are  discussing  is  peremptorily 
refuted,  or  is  reduced  to  absurdity. 

i 

From  the  outset  Marx  is  distinctly  aware  of 
the  existence  of  this  striking  contradiction, 
which  emerges  in  so  formidable  a  manner  in 
the  first  stage  of  his  investigation;  he  frankly 
recognises  it,  but  postpones  its  solution  to  the 
later  volumes  of  his  treatise.  On  the  very 
morrow,  indeed,  of  the  publication  of  the  first 
volume,  he  ardently  set  to  work  once  more,  and 
sketched  to  his  friend,  in  monumental  pages, 
the  design  of  the  complete  book.  Just  as  St. 


126  KARL  MARX 

Augustine  was  grieved  that  the  duties  of  his 
episcopate  deprived  him  of  the  hours  which 
he  would  have  preferred  to  devote  to  the  writ- 
ing of  a  volume  to  be  the  crown  of  his  City  of 
God,  so  Marx  was  harassed  by  the  thought  of 
the  time  which  the  work  of  party  organisation 
filched  from  his  scientific  labours,  and  it  was 
solely  that  he  might  escape  from  the  absorbing 
engagements  involved  in  the  former  task  that 
in  the  Ha^ue  congress  of  1872  he  proposed  the 
transfer  of  the  International  to  New  York. 

But  now  we  unexpectedly  reach  a  "dead 
point"  in  the  biography  of  our  thinker,  for  his 
mental  life,  otherwise  so  normal  and  so  bril- 
liant, here  suddenly  becomes  obscured,  and  is 
tinged  with  mystery  and  enigma.  For,  on  the 
one  hand,  Marx  clearly  affirmed,  and  showed 
by  his  actions,  that  he  definitely  wished  to  de- 
vote himself  to  the  completion  of  his  treatise, 
whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  undeniable 
that  after  the  publication  of  the  first  volume  of 
Capital,  he  never  wrote  another  line  of  the 


KARL  MARX  127 

book,  and  that  all  the  posthumous  additions  to 
this  volume  were  composed  prior  to  1867.  I 
do  not  mean  to  imply  that  during  subsequent 
years  he  gave  himself  up  to  inertia  or  repose, 
for  it  was  during  this  period  that  he  wrote  all 
the  economic  section  in  Engels'  booklet  against 
Duhring;  he  learned  Russian;  he  read  the 
agricultural  statistics  of  numerous  countries 
and  the  reports  on  poverty  in  Ireland;  he 
studied  the  matriarchal  system;  carried  on  in- 
genious discussions  with  Engels  concerning 
Carey's  theory  of  rent  and  Bastiat's  theory  of 
the  cost  of  reproduction;  threw  light  on  the 
influence  of  fluctuations  in  the  value  of  money 
upon  the  rate  of  profit;  sketched  a  mathemati^ 
cal  theory  of  commercial  cycles — in  a  word, 
his  thought-process  remained  so  active  that 
when  a  certain  publisher  asked  for  the  right 
to  issue  his  complete  works,  he  replied,  "My 
works,  those  which  represent  my  present 
thought,  are  not  yet  written."  But  the  essen- 
tial work  of  his  life,  the  work  which  had  been 


12 


8 


KARL  MARX 


so  much  cherished  and  which  he  again  and 
again  turned  over  in  his  thoughts,  seems,  as  far 
as  palpable  traces  are  concerned,  to  have  been 
entirely  dismissed  from  his  mind.  We  thus 
look  on,  marvelling  and  grieved,  at  the  sight 
of  the  enfeebled  hero  withdrawing  from  the 
field,  what  time  his  banner,  whose  staff  is  not 
yet  firmly  implanted  in  the  ground,  is  left  as  a 
target  for  the  easy  assaults  of  his  emboldened 
adversaries. 

There  certainly  contributed  to  this  intellec- 
tual shipwreck  the  illnesses  and  the  misfor- 
tunes from  which  Marx  suffered  during  the 
later  years  of  his  life.  ^  His^  health  had  been 
gravely  undermined  by  overwork  during  the 


and 

rgansaton ; 
trouble  from  boils  alternated  with  bronchitis, 
liver  disorder,  headache,  and  lumbago.  In 
vain  did  he  seek  health  in  gentler  climes,  at 
Ramsgate,  Ventnor,  Neuenahr,  Carlsbad,  Al- 
giers, Monte  Carlo,  Vevey,  and  other  fashion- 


KARL  MARX  129 

able  health  resorts.  All  attempts  at  cure  prov- 
ing inefficacious,  he  had  at  length  to  settle 
down  once  more  in  London. 

In  1 88 1  occurred  the  death  of  his  wife; 
while  the  death  of  his  beautiful  daughter 
Jenny,  Longuet's  wife,  in  January,  1883,  was, 
if  possible,  a  yet  more  cruel  blow.  Marx 
never  recovered  from  this  last  shock;  hence- 
forward he  was  a  broken  man,  the  mere 
shadow  of  his  former  self;  he  passed  his  time 
contemplating  the  portraits  of  his  two  dear 
ones  which  Engels  was  to  bury  with  him,  and 
he  no  longer  took  any  interest  in  the  world 
around  him  or  in  the  social  tumult  of  which 
he  was  the  inspirer  and  the  originator.  He 
died  suddenly  at  two  in  the  afternoon  of 
March  14,  1883,  while  seated  in  his  study 
chair.  The  titanic  brain,  which  had  given  a 
new  world  to  humanity,  which  had  broken 
once  for  all  the  spiritual  and  material  bond- 
age of  mankind,  had  ceased  to  live  and  to 
vibrate. 


130  KARL  MARX 

Most  distressing  of  all,  he  had  taken  with 
him  to  the  grave  the  solution  of  the  formid- 
able enigma  which  everyone,  the  vulgar  and 
the  thinkers  alike,  had  expected  his  genius  to 
solve,  and  which  no  one  else  could  unravel. 
It  is  true  that  shortly  before  his  death  he 
showed  his  friend  the  bulky  manuscripts  dic- 
tated in  earlier  days  relating  to  the  Criticism 
of  Political  Economy,  suggesting  that  some- 
thing might  be  made  of  this  collection.  It  is 
also  true  that  Engels,  faithful  executor  of  his 
divinity's  wishes,  devoted  himself  with  splen- 
did zeal  to  the  publication  of  the  manuscripts. 
But  alas  what  delusion  was  in  store  for  the 
admirers  of  the  master !  What  a  Russian  cam- 
paign of  disaster  organised  by  enthusiastic 
lieutenants  to  the  hurt  of  this  Napoleon  of 
thought! 

In  1885,  two  years  after  the  death  of  Marx, 
there  was  published  under  Engels'  supervision 
a  so-called  second  volume  of  Capital.  But 
the  careless  and  pedestrian  editorship,  the  long 


KARL  MARX  131 

theoretical  disquisitions  making  no  appeal  to 
facts  for  their  justification,  disquisitions  in 
which  the  argumentative  thread  is  continually 
broken,  suffice  to  show  that  what  we  have  be- 
fore us  is  not  a  book,  hardly  even  a  sketch  for 
a  book,  but  a  series  of  casual  writings  com- 
posed for  the  purposes  of  study  and  for  per- 
sonal illumination.  Moreover,  the  work  is 
wholly  devoted  to  uninspiring  monetary  dis- 
cussions upon  the  circulation  of  capital,  to 
dissertations  concerning  fixed  and  circulating 
capital,  the  formation  of  metallic  reserves,  the 
circulation  of  commodity-capital,  etc. 

Noteworthy,  in  any  case,  are  the  investiga- 
tions which  aim  at  throwing  light  on  the  proc- 
ess in  virtue  of  which  there  is  effected  the 
formation  of  metallic  reserves  which  remain 
out  of  circulation  for  a  longer  or  shorter  pe- 
riod. If,  says  Marx,  a  certain  commodity  re- 
quires for  its  production  six  months  of  labour, 
and  cannot  be  sold  until  two  months  after  its 
production  has  been  completed,  the  capitalist, 


1 32  KARL  MARX 

if  he  is  to  continue  the  work  of  production 
during  the  period  in  which  the  commodity 
remains  unsold,  has  need  of  additional  capital 
which  he  could  dispense  with  if  the  sale  could 
be  effected  immediately  after  production.  But 
when,  at  the  close  of  the  circulation  period, 
the  capitalist  resumes  possession  of  the  capital 
first  utilised  and  realises  it  in  money,  he  has  no 
immediate  need  of  all  this  capital,  but  only  of 
the  quantity  necessary  to  make  good  the  addi- 
tional capital  which  he  has  invested,  that  is  to 
say,  a  quantity  of  capital  equal  to  the  difference 
between  the  primary  capital  and  the  supple- 
mentary capital;  consequently  the  excess  re- 
mains at  liberty,  and  goes  to  constitute  and  to 
increase  monetary  reserves.  These  reserves 
are  formed  in  addition,  and  by  an  analogous 
process,  on  account  of  the  wear  of  machinery; 
for  the  portions  of  value  transmitted  by  the 
machines  to  the  product  and  correlative  to  the 
wear  of  these  machines  are  pent  up  until  the 
day  of  the  complete  destruction  of  the 


KARL  MARX         ,          133 

machines  or  of  their  necessary  replacement. 
Thus  the  difference  between  the  period  of 
production  and  the  period  of  exchange  of  the 
commodities,  and  the  difference  between  the 
period  of  economic  redintegration  and  the  pe- 
riod of  technical  redintegration  of  the  produc- 
tive machinery,  give  rise  to  the  formation  of 
monetary  or  capitalistic  reserves,  which  be- 
come in  their  turn  the  source  of  intricate 
developments  and  interesting  complications. 

The-  book    likewise    contains    a    masterly,   ^ 
though  wordy  and  disconnected,  account  of  the 
circulation   of   capital.      But   absolutely   no- 


\ 

where  does  it  touch  on  or  even  hint  at  the 
theoretical  enigma  left  unsolved  in  the  first 
Solely  in  Engels'  preface  do  we  find 


an  announcement  that  the  definitive  solution 
will  be  furnished  in  a  subsequent  volume,  and 
a  suggestion  that  in  the  interim  economists  en- 
gage in  a  sort  of  academic  debate,  and  bring 
forward  their  respective  solutions.  There 
actually  took  part  in  this  strange  competition, 


134  KARL  MARX 

with  varying  success,  Conrad  Schmidt,  Lande, 
Lexis,  Skworzoff,  Stiebeling,  Julius  Wolf, 
Fireman,  Lafargue,  Soldi,  Coletti,  Graziadei, 
A  and  myself.  Atjgngth,  however,  in  i8Q4^ap- 
pearcd  the  third  volume^which  was  to_j;eyeal 
to  an  Impatient  world  the  desired  solution. 

The  solution  reduces  itself  TcPthis  It  is 
true,  says  Marx,  that  the  value  commensurate 
to  labour  ends  by  assigning  to  the  capitals  re- 
spectively employed  as  constant  and  as  vari- 
able, different  rates  of  profit,  and  that  this  is 
radically  incompatible  with  competition.  But 
it  is  likewise  true 


their  prire_nf 
production,  which  is  equal  to  the  capital  con- 
liumed~plus  profit  at  the  ordinary  rate  on  the 
total  capital  employed.  Certainly  if  we  con- 
sider the  mass  of  products  sold,  we  find  that 
their  total  price  is  precisely  equal  to  their  total 
value.  But  this  integral  value  is  not  distrib- 
uted among  the  various  products  in  proportion 
to  the  quantity  of  labour  incorporated  in  them, 


KARL  MARX  135 

but  in  a  lesser  or  greater  proportion,  according 
as  the  products  themselves  contain  a  greater  or 
less  proportion  of  the  mean  between  the  con- 
stant capital  and  the  total  capital;  that  is  to 
say,  the  products  containing  a  proportion  of 
constant  capital  superior  to  the  mean  are  sold 
at  a  price  above  their  value  in  order  to  elimi- 
nate the  deficiency  of  profit  due  to  the  prepon- 
derance of  the  capital  which  does  not  produce 
surplus  value ;  whereas  the  products  containing 
a  proportion  of  constant  capital  inferior  to  the 
mean  are  sold  at  a  price  less  than  their  value 
so  as  to  eliminate  the  excess  of  profit  due  to 
the  preponderance  of  the  capital  that  produces 
surplus  value;  whilst  only  the  products  con- 
taining the  mean  proportion  of  constant  capi- 
tal and  total  capital  are  sold  at  a  price  pre- 
cisely identical  with  their  value. 

But  it  soon  becomes  apparent  that  this  so- 
called  solution  is  little  more  than  a  play  upon 
words,  or,  better  expressed,  little  more  than  a 
solemn  mystification.  For  when  economists 


136  KARL  MARX 

endeavour  to  throw  light  upon  the  laws  of 
value,  they  naturally  consider  the  value  at 
which  the  commodities  are  actually  sold,  and 
not  a  fantastical  or  transcendental  value,  not 
a  value  which  neither  possesses  nor  can  pos- 
sess any  concrete  relationship  to  facts.  It  may 
well  be  that  value  as  determined  by  abstract 
economic  theory  will  not  always  correspond 
precisely  with  value  as  a  concrete  fact,  for  the 
complexities  and  the  manifold  vicissitudes  of 
real  life  impose  obstacles;  it  may  well  be,  in- 
deed, that  to  the  rigidity  of  normal  value,  con- 
stituting the  type  of  the  relationship  of  ex- 
change, we  ought  to  counterpose  the  compara- 
tively transient  fluctuations  of  current  value. 

But  it  must  be  understood  that  no  logical  fact 
should  stand  in  the  way  of  the  realisation  of 
normal  value,  for  this,  conversely,  ought  to  be 
derived  by  logical  necessity  from  fundamental 
economic  premises.  Of  a  value,  indeed,  which 
not  only  is  not  realised,  but  is  not  logically 
capable  of  realisation,  the  economist  neither 


KARL  MARX  137 

can  nor  ought  to  take  any  account;  he  should 
show  in  what  respect,  instead  of  being  the  ex- 
pression of  what  value  is,  it  is  the  expression 
of  what  value  is  not  and  cannot  be;  he  should 
point  out  the  negation  of  every  correct  and 
positive  theory  of  value.    Now  this  value  com- 
mensurate   to   labour,   value    as    defined    by 
/Marx's  theory,  not  merely  has  its  realisation 
(  restricted  or  modified  by  the  vicissitudes  of 
1  reality,  but  further,  as  Marx  himself  is  con- 
/  strained  to  recognise,  is  not  logically  capa- 
\  ble  of  realisation,  seeing  that  it  would  give  rise 
to  results  incompatible  with  the  most  elemen- 
tary advantage  of  those  who  effect  the  ex- 
change of  commodities;  consequently,  it  is  not 
merely  an  abstraction  remote  from  reality,  but 
is  incompatible  with  reality;  not  only  is  it  an 
impossibility  in  the  realm  of  fact,  but  further 
and  above  all  it  is  a  logical  impossibility. 

Thus,  far  from  effecting  the  salvation  of  the 
threatened  doctrine,  this  alleged  solution  ad- 
ministers a  death-blow,  and  implies  the  cate- 


y 


138  KARL  MARX    /  ( 

gorical  negation  of  what  it  professes  to  sup- 
port. For  what  meaning  can  there  possibly  be 
in  this  reduction  of  value  to  labour,  the  doc- 
trine dogmatically  affirmed  in  the  first  volume, 
to  one  who  already  knows  that  foe  author  is 
himself  calmly  prepared  to  (jettison)  it?  Is 
there  any  reason  for  surprise  at  Marx's  hesita- 
tion to  publish  this  so-called  defence;  need  we 
wonder  that  his  hand  trembled,  that  his  spirit 
quailed,  before  the  inexorable  act  of  destruc- 
tion? 

Despite  all,  however,  genius  will  not  be  de- 
nied, and  even  this  volume  contains  here  and 
there  masterly  disquisitions,  enriching  the 
science  of  economics  with  new  and  fertile 
truths.  It  will  be  enough,  in  this  connection, 
to  refer  to  two  theories.  The  first  of  these,  the 
theory  of  the  decline  in  the  rate  of  pfflfit, 
though  not  free  from  objection,  is  none  the  less 
inspired  and  profound.  The  second  is  the 
theory  of^^bsglulfi^nt^j^^  acute 

deduction  from  the^TvIarxist  theory  of  value. 


KARL  MARX  139 

This  theory,  indeed,  as  we  saw  just  now,  leads 
to  the  conclusion  that  value  commensurate  to 
labour  furnishes  an  extra  profit  to  the  capital 
which  produces  commodities  requiring  for 
their  production  an  above-average  proportion 
of  variable  capital.  Now,  where  free  compe- 
tition exists,  such  extra  profit  cannot  continue, 
and  must  necessarily  be  eliminated  by  a  reduc- 
tion in  the  price  of  the  product  to  a  point  be- 
low its  value.  But  when  competition  is  not 
fully  free,  there  is  no  reason  why  such  extra 
profit  should  not  be  permanent.  Now 
agrarian  production  requires  an  abnormally 
high  proportion  of  variable  capital,  and  con- 
sequently agricultural  produce,  when  sold  for 
its  value,  furnishes  an  extra  profit.  But  since 
land  is  a  monopolised  element,  this  extra  profit 
can  be  permanently  assigned  to  the  owners  of 
the  soil,  because  there  is  no  effective  competi- 
tion to  prevent  their  continuing  to  draw  it. 
There  thus  comes  into  existence  an  absolute 
land  rent,  in  opposition  to  or  in  addition  to 


140  KARL  MARX 

the  differential  rent  of  Ricardo's  theory.  This 
absolute  rent  is  not  due  to  the  varying  cost  of 
production  in  different  areas;  it  is  not  the  ex- 
clusive appanage  of  lands  more  favourably 
situated  or  of  lands  of  better  quality;  it  arises 
solely  from  the  excess  in  the  value  of  agrarian 
produce  over  its  cost  of  production,  and  is  a 
general  attribute  of  land  per  se,  in  virtue  of  its 
quality  as  a  monopolised  element.  Marx 
acutely  studies  the  manifold  varieties  of  this 
rent,  according  as  it  is  rendered  in  work,  in 
produce,  or  in  money;  and  with  sound  and 
far-reaching  intuition  he  deduces  from  his 
theory  explanations  of  the  intricate  agrarian 
relationships  among  the  various  peoples  of  the 
globe. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  gem  with  which  the 
work  is  adorned.  Very  remarkable  are  the 
pages  upon  merchants'  capital  and  money- 
lenders' capital,  on  their  despotic  predomi- 
nance prior  to  the  inauguration  of  the  capi- 
talist regime,  and  upon  their  inevitable  disso- 


KARL  MARX  141 

lution  after  the  advent  of  that  regime.  The 
closing  pages,  however,  seem  to  breathe  a 
vague  weariness,  and  we  find  hardly  any  trace 
of  masterly  theoretical  discussion  of  the  class 
struggle,  of  its  origin,  of  the  instruments 
through  which  it  operates,  although  this  dis- 
cussion, according  to  the  author's  original 
plan,  was  to  be  the  monumental  crown  of  the 
titanic  work. 

Thus,  however  fragmentarily,  and  thank 
to  the  help  of  lieutenants  and  of  disciples  wh< 
were  not  always  adequately  instructed,   the 
theoretical  treatise,  at  once  the  pride  and  th< 
torment  of  our  prophet,  at  length  arrived  a 
completion.     But  the  reader  will  not  forge 
that  to  the  positive  treatment  of  his  subject, 
Marx  always  counterposed  a  historico-critical 
investigation  of  the  theories  of  his  precursors, 
and  in  the  more  mature  design  of  his  work 
such  an  exposition  was  to  follow  upon  the  ex- 
position of  his  own  doctrines  and  to  form  their 
apt  complement.     It  remained,  therefore,  to 


142  KARL  MARX 

bring  to  light  this  last  part  of  his  researches,  a 
duty  which  was  faithfully  discharged  (after 
the  death  of  Engels.)  by  Karl  Kautskv,  with 
the  publication  of  th^IIistor^oftheTheory 
of  Surplus  Value,  which  appeared  in  four  vol- 
umes during  the  years  1905  to  1910.  Substan- 
tially, though  publishers  have  preferred  to 
treat  it  as  a  work  apart,  ({his  book  is  nothing 
other  than  the  concluding  section  of  Capital, 
announced  in  the  preface  to  the  first  volume, 
where  the  author  tells  of  a  senuel  to  be  devoted 
to  the  history  of  this  theory^ 

In  the  posthumous  work_Marx_t;races  the 
development  of  the  theoryof  surplus  value 
through_its  three  essential  stages,  the  prericar- 
dian,  the  Ricardian,  and  the  postricardian. 
To  the  first  of  these  phases  belong  the  theories 
of  the  physiocratic  school,  whose  essence  Marx 
grasps  with  marvellous  acuteness,  maintaining 
that  the  theories  in  question  were  the  doctrinal 
reflection  of  the  interests  of  the  rising  capital- 
ist class,  constrained  to  pretend  that  its  own 


KARL  MARX  143 

economic  claims  were  the  logical  expression 
of  the  advantage  of  the  landed  and  feudalist 
classes  then  politically  dominant.  Particu- 
larly noteworthy  are  the  comments  on  the 
teaching  of  Adam  Smith.  The  second  volume 
contains  a  searching  criticism  of  the  Ricardian 
system,  and  above  all  of  Ricardo's  theories  of 
value  and  of  profit.  In  the  third  section  Marx 
passes  judgment^on  the  theories  _of  Ricardo's 
successors,  Malthus,  SeniorT  and  John  Stua/t 
Mill,  for  these  writers,  says  Marx,  follow  the 
setting  sun  of  bourgeois  economic  science,  fol- 
low that  science  to  its  now  inevitable  doom. 
It  was  a  fixed  idea  with  Marx  that  the  theo- 
retical analysis  of  capitalist  relationships  had 
secured  its  fullest  and  most  adequate  expres- 
sion in  the  pages  of  Ricardo;  he  believed  that 
Ricardo  had  supplied  the  ultimate  synthesis 
possible  on  these  lines;  that  any  further  prog- 
ress of  economic  science  in  its  bourgeois  trap- 
pings had  become  impossible;  that  its  decline 
amid  contradictions  and  perversions  was  in- 


144  KARL  MARX 

evitable;  and  that  economics  could  only  be 
renewed  and  reborn  when  the  disintegrated 
vesture  of  bourgeois  economic  relationships 
had  been  completely  thrown  aside  to  give  place 
to  a  definitive  and  superior  social  form.  It  is 
scarcely  necessary  to  point  to  the  sophisms  and 
the  arbitrary  assumptions  upon  which  this  con- 
cept is  based;  but  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
poverty,  deficiency,  and  incurable  vanity  of 
current  economic  science  increasingly  tend  to 
give  the  theory  an  awkward  semblance  of 
truth. 


CHAPTER  V 

To-DAY,  now  that  the  fruits  of  Marx's  medi- 
tations, be  it  only  as  the  result  of  the  work  of 
collaborators,  be  it  only  with  many  gaps  and 
imperfections,  have  all  been  given  forth  to  the 
reading  world,  it  is  at  length  possible  to  take 
a  general  view,  and  to  pass  a  dispassionate 
judgment  upon  the  pre-eminent  worth  of  his 
writings.  The  most  austere  criticism  must 
bow  reverently  before  such  gigantic  mental 
attainments  as  have  few  counterparts  in  the 
history  of  scientific  thought,  garnering  from 
all  branches  of  knowledge  on  behalf  of  the 
undying  cause  of  mankind.  The  most  inexor- 
able criticism  should  recognise  in  Marx  the 
supreme  merit  of  having  been  the  first  to  in- 
troduce  the  evolutionary  concept  into  the  do-  7 


146  KARL  MARX 

main  of  sociology,  the  first  to  introduce  it  in 
the  only  form  appropriate  to  social  phenomena 
and  social  institutions ;  not  as  the  unceasing  and 
gradual  upward-movement  outlined  by  Spen- 
cer, but  as  the  succession  of  agelong  cycles 
rhythmically  interrupted  by  revolutionary  ex- 
plosions, proceeding  in  accordance  with  the 
manner  sketched  by  Lyell  for  geological  evo- 
lution, and  in  our  own  time  by  de  Vries  for 
biological  evolution. 

With  the  aid  of  this  concept,  strictly  positive 
and  scientific,  j^iarx  triumphantly  ov^rthisw, 
on  the  one  hand  classical  economic  science, 
taken  prisoner  by  its  own  notion  of  a  petrified 
society,  and  on  the  other  the  philosophy  of 
law  and  (idealist  socialism  which  were  con- 
vinced that  it  was  possible  to  mould  the  world 
in  accordance  with  the  arbitrary  conceptions 
of  the  thinker.)  Looked  at  in  this  light,  the 
work  of  Mare  presents  a  new  instrument  for 
the  use  of  the  philosophy  of  history  and  for 
the  use  of  sociology;  and  it  has  contributed  no 


KARL  MARX  147 

less  powerfully  to  the  advance  of  technological 
science,  thanks  to  the  writer's  masterly  inves- 
tigation into  the  successive  forms  of  the  tech- 
nical instrument  of  productive  machinery.  In 
this  respect  more  than  in  any  others  Marx  may 
be  compared  with  Darwin,  and  may  indeed  be 
spoken  of  as  the  Darwin  of  technology:  for  no 
one  has  ever  had  a  profounder  knowledge  than 
Marx  of  the  structural  development  of  the  in- 
dustrial mechanism,  no  one  else  has  followed 
step  by  step  the  formation  and  upward  elabo- 
ration, of  productive  technique;  just  as  Dar- 
win, with  invincible  mental  energy,  traced  the 
evolution  of  animal  technique,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  functional  apparatus  of  organised 
beings. 

This  physiology  of  industry,  which  is  now 
the  least  studied  and  least  appreciated  of 
Marx's  scientific  labours,  nevertheless  consti- 
tutes his  most  considerable  and  most  enduring 
contribution  to  science.  Noteworthy,  in  espe- 
cial, and  destined  to  form  a  permanent  and  in- 


148  KARL  MARX 

tegral  part  of  the  economic  science  of  the 
world,  are  Marx's  analyses  of  money,  credit, 
the  circulation  of  capital,  poverty,  primitive 
accumulation,  not  to  speak  of  the  historico- 
critical  investigations  into  the  work  of  the 
British  classical  economists — for  here  Marx, 
without  prejudice  to  the  merits  of  those  who 
have  fought  honourably  in  this  difficult  arena, 
will  ever  remain  the  most  brilliant  and  most 
profound  commentator.  For  these  mighty 
and  noblecontributions,  hij 
scribed  inimperishable  letters  in  the  history 
of  creative  tKoughtT" 


ut  if  his  sociological,  historical,  and  tech- 
nological investigations,  if  his  studies  of 
money,  the  banking  system,  and  industrial  sta- 
tistics, be  so  many  intellectual  jewels  of  which 
no  praise  can  be  excessive,  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  his  fundamental  economic  theory  is 
essentially  vitiated  and  sophistical,  and  that  he 
is  himself  responsible  for  reducing  it  to  hope- 


tess  absurdity.    We  arrive,  therefore,  at  this 


KARL  MARX  149 

remarkable  result:  that  Marx,  whose  primary 
aim  it  was  to  be  a  theorist  of  political  econ- . 
omy,  and  to  deal  only  in  subsidiary  fashion 
with  the  philosophy  of  history  and  technology, 
secured  a  triumphant  success  in  these  subordi- 
nate fields;  whereas  in  respect  of  the  funda- 
mental object  of  his  thought,  his  work  was  a 
complete  failure. 

(  Nor  can  we  deny  that  the  very  design  of 
Marx's^work,  however  marvellous  in  the 
Michelangelesqiie  grandeur  of  its  ensemble, 
does  not  satisfy  those  who  insist  upon  strictly 
scientific  method,  and  that  in  this  respect 
Marx  stands  far  below  the  great  masters  of 
positive  science.  For,  however  admirable  and 
however  great  this  man  who  succeeded  in  sub- 
suming an  entire  world  within  the  limits  of 
an  extremely  simple  initial  principle,  and 
whose  life  was  but  the  development  of  an 
equation  which  he  had  formulated  at  its  out- 
set, how  far  more  straightforward  and  trust- 
worthy, how  far  more  scientific,  was  the 


150  KARL  MARX 

method  of  Darwin,  who  never  formulated  any 
apriorist  principles,  but,  quite  free  from  pre- 
conceptions, accepted  phenomena  in  the  order 
of  progressive  complexity  in  which  life  itself 
presented  them.  Darwin  first  studied  the  nat- 
ural formation  of  organised  beings,  then  de- 
voted himself  to  an  examination  of  the  larger 
types,  and  was  finally  led  to  infer  their  devel- 
opment by  evolutionary  growth.  This  method, 
which  follows  nature  and  reflects  it,  seems  far 
more  worthy  of  respect,  far  more  honest,  far 
more  strictly  scientific,  than  the^ther  method, 
which  manipulates  the  truth,  does  violence  to 
the  truth,  in  order  to  accommodate  it  to  hidden 
ends. 

"TFere  is  no  reason,  therefore,  to  be  surprised 
that  such  a  flood  of  criticism  should  have  been 
directed  against  this^colossus,  or  that  on  the 
morrow  of  the  completion  of  Marx's  work  the 
skies  of  the  two  hemispheres  should  have  rung 
with  disorderly  clamour  proclaiming  the 
crisis,  nay  the  failure,  of  Marxism.  But  that 


KARL  MARX  151 

which  is  less  easy  to  understand,  that  which 
discloses  the  utter  immaturity  of  economic 
science  as  well  as  of  contemporary  socialism, 
is  that  criticism  has  not  been  directed  against 
the  truly  vulnerable  point  of  the  system,  but 
has  been  solely  concerned  in  attacking  its  bet- 
ter defended  and  less  fragile  parts.  In  fact 
the  scientific  and  socialist  currents  partially 
or  wholly  opposed  to  Marxism  display  a 
strange  reverence  for  his  theory  of  value,  or 
do  not  venture  to  attack  it,  but  concentrate  *~  ' 
their  forces  against  the  statistical  and  histori- 
cal theories  which  are  the  deductions  and 
complements  of  the  Marxist  theory  of  value. 
In  this  respect  the  critics  of  Marxism  form 
two  very  distinct  groups.  The  first  of  these, 
the  reformist  or  revisionisLs^hool,  has  a  high 
respect  for  the  master's  theory  of  value,  and 
reiterates  it  as  an  indisputable  truth;  whereas 
reformists .  criticise  the  theory  of  increasing 
misery,  the  theory  of  the  concentration  of  capi- 
tal, and  above  all  the  catastrophic  vision  of  the 


152  KARL  MARX 

proletarian  revolution.     The  writers  of  this 
jgchool  affirm,  and  think  that  in  so  doing  they 


-are  setting  up  an  antithesis  to  Marxism,  that 
to  await  the  millennium  of  the  social  revolu- 


tion is  futile  utopianism;  they  contend,  that 
the  progressive  reduction  in  the  number  of  the 
wealthy,  paralleled  by  the  ceaseless  increase  in 
the  number  of  more  and  more  impoverished 
proletarians,  a  development  which  according 
to  Marx's  vision  was  to  provide  the  apparatus 
destined  to  destroy  the  contemporary  econ- 
omy, is  negatived  by  an  actual  tendency  to- 
wards a  more  democratic  distribution  of  com- 
modities; and  they  insist,  therefore,  that  social- 
ism should  aim  at  securing  the  triumph  of  its 
cause  by  means  that  are  less  violent  but  far 
more  efficacious,  namely  by  social  legislation 

reforms  tending  to  reduce  inequality. 
Now,  without  troubling  to  repeat  what  I 
have  already  said,  that  the  Marxist  dynamic 
of  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  far  from  being 
as  completely  negatived  by  contemporary  facts 


KARL  MARX  153 

as  these  critics  are  pleased  to  insist,  I  merely 
propose  to  point  out  that  this  paying  of  high 
honour  to  reform  and  social  legislation  nowise 
conflicts  with  the  doctrine  or  with  the  work 
of  Marx,  who,  on  the  contrary,  was  the  first  to 
throw  into  high  relief  the  pre-eminent  value 
of  social  legislation,  devoting  classical  chap- 
ters to  the  elucidation  of  its  most  memorable 
manifestations.  In  this  light,  therefore,  re- 
visionism of  reformism,  far  from  being  a  nega- 
tion or  correction  of  Marxism,  is  a  specific 
application  or  partial  realisation  of  the  doc- 
trine, for  it  brings  into  the  lime-light  one  of 
the  numerous  sides  of  that  marvellous  polyhe- 
^dron^and  deserves  credit  for  having  explained 
and  developed  this  particular  aspect  of  Marx- 
ism. 

But  revisionism  errs  gravely  in  that  it  wishes 
to  replace  the  beautiful  and  complex  multi- 
plicity of  the  Marxist  system  by  forcing  us  to 
contemplate  this  unilateral  aspect  alone.  The 
reformists  err  in  that  they  fail  to  see  that  legis- 


154  KARL  MARX 

lative  reforms,  though  desirable  and  extremely 
opportune,  are  invariably  circumscribed  by 
the  prepotent  opposition  of  the  privileged 
classes,  and  can  never  do  anything  more  than 
mitigate  a  few  of  the  grosser  harshnesses  of 
the  present  system — whilst,  precisely  because 
they  effect  this  mitigation,  reforms  tend  to  pre- 
serve an  increasingly  unstable  economic  order 
from  the  imminent  disaster  of  a  destructive 
cataclysm. 

If  the  reformist  school  mutilates  Marxism 
thus  violently,  by  reducing  the  whole  of  Capi- 
tal to  the  paragraphs  extolling  social  legisla- 
tion.  the  ':' -dicalists) inflict  a  yet  cruder 


L- 

mutilation  on^he  Marxist  system  by  tearing  a 


single  page  out  of  Capital,  to  make  of  this 
/  page  the  alpha  and_the  omega  of  their  revolu- 
tionary  -creed.  It  is  true  that  Marx,  in  the 
thirty-first  chapter  of  Capital,  makes  an  ex- 
plicit appeal  to  force,  the  midwife  of  every 
old  society  pregnant  with  a  new  one;  but  this 
appeal  is  not  made  until  it  has  been  fully  dem- 


KARL  MARX 


w  tier  aBd.  snail  Imc  JK 


5w  the  s^ndkali 


Ac  task  of  grrin^  it  the  lie  in 

»_  "X    —   B  a^        ^B^^H- 
:r  ir.  15  nf  "f 


156  KARL  MARX 

annihilate  the  prevailing  economic  order,  why 
do  they  not  rise  against  the  capitalism  they  de- 
test, and  replace  it  with  the  co-operative  com- 
monwealth for  which  they  long?  Why  is  it 
that  after  so  much  noisy  organisation,  after  so 
much  declamation  and  delirious  excitement, 
the  utmost  they  are  able  to  do  is  to  tear  up  a 
few  yards  of  railway  track  or  to  smash  a  street 
lamp?  Do  we  not  find  here  an  irrefragable 
demonstration  that  force  is  not  realisable  at 
any  given  moment,  but  only  in  the  historic 
hour  when  evolution  shall  have  prepared  the 
inevitable  fall  of  the  dominant  economic 
system? 

Thus  whatever  they  can  do,  it  always  seems 
that  the  infirm  will  of  the  disciples  who  de- 
mand an  arbitrary  renovation  of  the  social 
system  (whether  by  legal  measures  or  by 
force)  breaks  vainly  against  the  fatality  of 
evolution,  and  that  reformism  and  syndicalism 
are  merely  caricatures,  counterfeits,  or  exag- 
gerations of  the  many-sided  and  well-balanced 


KARL  MARX  157 

theory  of  the  master,  who  proposed  a  threefold 
line  of  advance:  by  jocial  legislation ;  by  the/ 
activity  of  the  organised  workers ;  and  by  revo- 
lution.  In  face  of  these  various  forms  of  neo- 
marxism,  the  outcome  of  mutilations  and  of 
one-sided  exclusivism,  Marx  redivivus  would 
have  excellent  reason  for  repeating  his  own 
adage,  so  thoughtful  and  so  true,  "I  am  not  a 
Marxist."  However  striking  the  temporary 
success  of  these  new  forms  among  the  crowd  or 
among  the  learned,  we  may  confidently  predict 
that  neither  reformism  nor  syndjfallsm  will 
definitively  supplant  the  Marxist  system, 
which  despite  all  and  against  all  remains  and 
will  remain  a  supreme  and  invincible  force  at 
once  of  theory  and  of  organisation  for  the  pro- 
letarian assault  upon  the  long-enduring  fort- 
ress of  property., 

The  value  of  Marx's  work  is,  in  fact,  dis- 
played in  the  most  brilliant  light  by  the  de- 
tailed criticism  of  the  theorists  and  by  the  con- 
trast with  opposing  trends;  all  the  more  when 


158  KARL  MARX 

we  compare  the  aspect  of  economic  thought 
and  of  proletarian  organisation  before  and 
after  the  publication  of  Capital.  For  if  we 
study  the  utterances  of  thinkers  upon  these 
matters  during  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  we  find  that  nearly  all  are  dominated 
by  the  categorical  idea  that  the  social  order  is 
of  an  absolutely  immobile  character,  and  that 
none  but  a  few  Utopians  entertain  the  thought 
of  changing  that  order  by  means  of  precipitate 
legislation  inspired  by  their  individual  pre- 
conceptions. In  any  case,  it  was  an  idea  com- 
mon to  all,  to  revolutionists  as  well  as  to  con- 
servatives, that  the  poverty  of  the  masses  was 
a  negative  and  distressing  residue  from  the 
economic  system,  that  it  was  a  purely  passive 
feature  of  that  system  which  must  be  accepted 
with  resignation,  for  it  could  not  exercise  any 
propulsive  influence  in  the  general  social 
movement.  This  is  substantially  the  notion 
which  emerges  from  Victor  Hugo's  Les  Mis- 
erable*, for  poverty  is  here  regarded  as  an 


KARL  MARX  159, 

overwhelming  mass  of  suffering  for  which  it 
is  impossible  to  assign  the  responsibility;  it 
is  looked  upon  as  a  load  pressing  with  inexor- 
able cruelty  upon  suffering  humanity,  which 
is  unable  to  respond  by  anything  more  effec- 
tive than  complaints  and  tears. 

But  how  utterly  different  is  the  notion  pre- 
vailing in  our  own  days  upon  this  matter.  Not 
only  is  the  conviction  now  rooted  in  the  mind 
of  every  thinker  that  the  economic  order  is 
subject  to  unceasing  change,  is  advancing  to- 
wards predestined  destruction;  but  it  is  con- 
sidered certain  that  the  artificer,  the  demiurge, 
the  most  potent  factor  of  this  destruction,  will 
be  the  active  resistance,  the  unrest,  the  rebel- 
lion, of  the  proletarians  in  the  grasp  of  the 
capitalist  machine  and  eager  to  destroy  it. 
This  conception  of  the  dynamogenic  function 
of  poverty  is  the  most  characteristic  feature  of 
the  social  thought  of  our -day,  the  feature 
wherein  that  thought  contrasts  most  categoric- 
ally with  the  ideas  of  an  earlier  age.  Just  as 


160  KARL  MARX 

the  Christian  sect,  represented  by  Gibbon  as  a 
mere  pathological  efflorescence  growing  on  the 
margin  of  Roman  society,  is  by  the  better 
equipped  science  of  our  own  time  looked  upon 
as  having  been  the  most  potent  solvent  of  the 
imperial  complex  and  as  the  ferment  generat- 
ing a  new  and  better  life,  so  the  proletarian 
masses,  regarded  by  the  science  and  the  art  of 
the  past  as  a  crushed  and  pitiful  appendage 
of  the  bourgeois  economy,  now  appear  to  con- 
temporary science  as  the  most  vigorous  among 
the  forces  tending  to  disintegrate  that  econ- 
omy, as  tending  irresistibly  to  create  a  higher 
and  better  balanced  form  of  association. 

Correlatively  with  this  development,  where- 
as the  proletarians  of  other  days  were  content 
to  sulk  in  their  hovels  as  they  contemplated 
the  brilliant  gyrations  of  the  capitalist  constel- 
lation, merely  cursing  in  secret  the  sorrows  of 
their  lot,  to-day  the  workers  of  the  two  worlds 
are  advancing  inj^rried  ranks  to  the  conquest 
of  a  new  humanity  knd  a  new  life.  Thus  the 


KARL  MARX  161 

immobility  of  our  fathers  has  given  place  to 
rapid  movement;  their  discouragement  and 
resignation,  to  rebellious  demands  ;  and  where- 
as of  old  a  chasm  yawned  between  the 
scattered  visionaries  who  entertained  dreams 
oT  social  rebirtlT  and  the  inert  mass  of  the 
poverfy-strickep,  we  find  t(>cfay  thai 


poverfshed  are  themselves  becoming  the  artifi- 
cers, the  heralds,  the  pioneers,  of  the  irresist- 
ible ascent  of  humanity  towards  a  juster 
and  better  social  order.  Now  all  this  new 
moral  and  social  world,  unknown  to  our  grand- 
parents, the  glory  and  the  plague  of  science, 
of  society,  of  contemporary  life;  all  this  gi- 
gantic tumult  of  ideas,  facts,  claims,  of  as- 
saults, wounds,  innovating  reconstructions  ;  all 
this  marvellous  necromancy  is  the  work  of  one 
man,  a  sage  and  a  martyr.  All  this  we  owe  to 
Karl  Marx.  It  measures,  concretes,  and  ma- 
terialises for  us  his  colossal  worth  and  the 
omnipotent  vastness  of  his  achievement. 
Though  science  may  well  and  with  full  right 


1 62  KARL  MARX 

complain  of  the  gaps  in  his  doctrinal  system, 
.  f  though  life  may  furnish  the  most  definite  refu- 
\  tations  of  his  theoretical  visions,  and  though 
/  )  future  history  may  display  forms  of  which  he 
never  dreamed,  nevertheless,  no  one  will  ever 
\  be  able  to  unseat  him  from  his  throne,  or  to 
dispute  the  sovereignty  which  accrues  to  him 
on  account  of  his  splendid  contributions  to 
civil    progress.      Whether    praised    and    ac- 
cepted, or  despised  and  rejected,  by  practice 
or  by  theory,  by  history  or  by  reason,  he  will 
always  remain  the  emperor  in  the  realm  of 
mind,  the  Prometheus  foredestined  to  lead  the 
human  race  towards  the  brilliant  goal  which 
awaits  it  in  a  future  not  perhaps  immeasur- 
ably remote. 

For  the  day  is  coming.  And  in  that  day, 
when  remorseless  time  shall  have  destroyed  the 
statues  of  the  saints  and  of  the  warriors,  renas- 
cent humanity  will  raise  in  honour  of  the 
author  of  this  work  of  destruction,  upon  the 
shores  of  his  native  stream,  a  huge  mausoleum 


KARL  MARX  163 

representing  the  proletarian  breaking  his 
chains  and  entering  upon  an  era  of  conscious 
and  glorious  freedom.  Thither  will  come  the 
regenerated  peoples  bearing  garlands  of  re- 
membrance and  of  gratitude  to  lay  upon  the 
shrine  of  the  great  thinker,  who,  amid  suffer- 
ings, humiliations,  and  numberless  privations, 
fought  unceasingly  for  the  ransom  of  man- 
kind. And  the  mothers,  as  they  show  to  their 
children  the  suffering  and  suggestive  figure, 
will  say,  their  voices  trembling  with  emotion 
and  joy:  See  from  what  darkness  our  light  has 
come  forth;  see  how  many  tears  have  watered 
the  seeds  of  our  joy;  look,  and  pay  reverence 
to  him  who  struggled,  who  suffered,  who  died 
for  the  Supreme  Redemption. 


(s, 


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